Strangers in Paradise
by ofperkins
Summary: When two young lovers find an ancient book buried in the desert, they are thrust into a world they could never have imagined. But it is not long before they discover that there is more to this than meets the eye. Spoilers and minor suggestive themes.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Jordan stepped out of the small house into the blazing desert sun. He was 18, a tall, good-natured young man. Many people in the nearby town and the capital city had asked him why he chose to live out in the desert, near the old extinct volcano and the strangely-furnished crack in the ground next to it, and he had always answered that the desert was his second love, then smiled and walked away before they could ask him what his first love was.

His first love stepped out of the house behind him. Rachel was 17, with short brown hair and sharing Jordan's good nature. They had met almost two years ago at the local high school and had become inseparable. It was their weekly routine to go for a walk around the volcano compound, sometimes up onto the volcano, sometimes down into the cleft, sometimes just for a relaxing stroll. Today was a day for a relaxing stroll.

There had been a huge dust storm last night, the largest Jordan could remember, and he wanted to go over to the new dunes he could see over by the windward side of the volcano. Rachel had never been as fascinated with dunes as he was; she could never understand what was so fascinating about them.

* * *

The new dunes stretched quite tall, almost as tall as Jordan. Sinking down in the shadow of one of the larger ones, Rachel stopped to rest for a bit whilst Jordan, tireless as he was, climbed up one of the smaller dunes. Her eyes followed the pair of birds circling in the sky. Years of experience in studying desert life and she still couldn't work out what sort of birds these were. She knew hawks when she saw them, and vultures and eagles were easy to recognise. But these birds were different. She had seen them many times before, and they didn't seem to be any species that she knew of...

Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud thump. She jumped up and ran over to where Jordan lay on the sand.

"What happened to you?" she asked, as she knew full well he was perfectly fine.

"I tripped over that, the sandstorm must have uncovered it," he said, pointing to a small object jutting up out of the ground. He got to his feet and together they went and tugged at the object. Slowly it came free from the sand. "Good Lord..." exclaimed Rachel softly as it slid out, "It's a..."

* * *

The old grey book sat on Jordan's table. Jordan and Rachel sat trying to read the incomprehensible script, but neither of them could make head or tail of it. Page after page of the completely unknown language. They had been at it all afternoon and still, no change, except that they were almost through the book.

Jordan turned the page again, and both gasped. Rather than the same script, something very different met their eyes. The left page was blank. The right page, however, contained a small rectangular picture of a wooden dock on some sort of island. The picture was immensely detailed and vivid with colour, but most amazingly of all, it was moving. Jordan could see the water lapping against the dock, Rachel could see the trees in the background waving lazily in the breeze, and they could both see the occasional seagull fly across the sky. They looked up from the book and at each other.

No words were necessary.


	2. Docking

**1 – Docking**

Rachel awoke with a start. She was staring up at a cloudless blue sky. She could hear water lapping and feel the hard texture of the wooden dock beneath her. She pinched herself sharply and closed her eyes.

A seagull cawed sharply, snapping her back to reality... or whatever this was. She sat up.

The island dock was exactly as it had looked in the picture in the book. There was a ship on her right, but as it was sunken so that only the tops of the masts were showing, she doubted that they could possibly have come here on that. Across from her was a set of wooden steps leading up off the dock. On a plateau overlooking the dock was an oversized set of gears.

Rachel got slowly to her feet and started to head towards the stairs, and nearly tripped over Jordan, who was still out cold. She shook him, but he did not stir. After shaking him a bit more to try to get him up, she gave up and headed for the stairs.

* * *

Rachel stood on the gear plateau and surveyed the island. Two buildings, one round and one square, were immediately visible down below her. Through the trees covering the west side of the island she could just make out some more buildings, but no real features were distinguishable. She sighed and sat down beside the huge gears. She had only woken up five minutes ago and she was already tired.

Her brain was buzzing with questions. Where were they? How did they get here? Is there anyone here who can answer these questions? And, most importantly of all, how do we get home?

* * *

Rachel awoke to a rumble of thunder. The sky had clouded over and the clouds were ominously dark. She hurried down the stairs, heading for the two buildings even as the first freezing drops of rain began to fall on the wooden path. She stumbled into the first building. It was completely empty except for what looked a lot like a dentist's chair. Making a mental note to come back and examine it more closely later, she went back outside.

The rain was really falling now. Arcs of lightning flashed across the sky and the thunder crashed as Rachel ran for the second, larger building, which turned out to be a library of some description, although a little short on books. The rain pounded the roof as she shook herself dry. The room she was standing in was perfectly octagonal, beautifully made with an attractive light brown timber and lit brilliantly by a chandelier hanging above the very centre of the room. There was a bookshelf opposite the door, stocked with a few books that looked like they'd seen better days, two other books on small shelves across from each other, two paintings, a map of what looked like this island and a roomy fireplace. Rachel cautiously approached the bookshelf – despite the pleasant feel of this room, she had the awful feeling that she was being watched, and the raging storm outside didn't help. She knelt down in front of the shelf and pulled one of the books down. She immediately discovered that it was burnt beyond repair, with only a solitary page still clinging to the binding. If she squinted hard enough at the burnt paper, she could just make out something somewhat akin to writing, but she couldn't quite distinguish any words...

A massive thunderclap shook the library to its foundations and the chandelier flickered a little. Rachel was genuinely creeped out now. The hairs on the back of her neck were prickling, and she felt even more like she was being watched. "Creepy," she murmured under her breath more confidently than she felt, "This is just like one of those horror movies where -"

A pair of hands seized her roughly from behind. If the raging thunder hadn't already woken the dead, the scream which proceeded to issue forth from Rachel's mouth would have easily done the trick. She swung her left leg backwards and felt it connect sharply with her attacker – right where it hurt, too. With fists raised, she spun around to face her assailant.

"Jordan!" she yelled, upon discovering who had just attacked her, "You idiot! You moron! You utter twit! You fu-"

"All right, all right, I get it, I get it! Don't sneak up on you when we're stranded on an unknown island in the middle of a thunderstorm if I value my life and the vital collection of items you just kicked! Point taken!" exclaimed Jordan, before the adjectives issuing forth from Rachel's mouth could continue. He looked in such a state that despite herself, Rachel couldn't help laughing, and once he recovered from her kick, Jordan couldn't help laughing either.

* * *

By morning the storm had blown itself out and the blue skies had returned. Together this time, and with Jordan in front at Rachel's insistence, they surveyed the rest of the island. They found three more buildings – a small log cabin, some sort of brick shed and an offshore clock tower showing the wrong time. They found controls on the shore that seemed to control the clock tower, but apart from changing the time, they didn't do anything, and the clock didn't work properly anyway. They found a large rocket balanced on a causeway that stretched out offshore behind the library, but the one thing that they couldn't seem to access was the tower on top of the mountain behind the library. The library was built into the base of the mountain, so they had originally suspected that there would be a way in from the library, but they could find nothing. After hours of searching, they finally gave up and sank down on the grass near a large stone basin with a model of the ship by the dock in it. A thin, almost pathetic warm breeze was blowing softly from the north.

"So, what have we found?" began Rachel, despite the fact that she knew what his answer was going to be.

"Nothing," replied Jordan, confirming Rachel's thoughts, "Oh, except this."

He extracted a sheet of paper from his pocket. "It was lying on the grass over there outside the round building yesterday. I picked it up before the storm could destroy it. It could be our only lead." He passed the paper to Rachel.

"'Catherine,'" she read out loud, "'I've left for you a message of utmost importance in our fore-chamber beside the dock...' Beside the dock? I didn't see anything beside the dock except that ship. Did you?"

Jordan had seen something when he woke up, he said. Some sort of door was set into the wall, but he hadn't hung around because the storm was already coming on. He had gone straight up to the library, pausing only to rescue the note.

"So why didn't you tell me about it?" Rachel exclaimed.

"I actually forgot about it until just then," admitted Jordan sheepishly.

Rachel resisted the urge to kick him again.

* * *

The fore-chamber was pleasantly cool, a nice change from the warmth of the dock. At the bottom of the stairs was a small pool of water. Nothing else.

"I thought there was meant to be some sort of imager down here," said Rachel, checking the note quickly. "There's nothing but this pool of water."

"What's that button do?" asked Jordan, pointing at a small button at the base of the pool.

Rachel pressed it and the water disappeared, revealing the machinery below it. "It is an imager, it was just displaying the water. It must be some sort of default setting. There must be some sort of controls."

They searched the room quickly. It wasn't long before Jordan pointed out a piece of paper on the wall next to the stairs. They examined it and discovered that it was a list of codes to make the imager display various things. But they still couldn't find the controls, until Rachel noticed a tiny green button poking through the paper. She pressed it and the paper slid upwards into the wall, revealing a large panel displaying two numbers – a six and a seven. Jordan quickly recalled that the code listed on the sheet for the water pool was 67.

"So this is the input panel. What do we have to input to see this message?" asked Rachel.

"According to the note, the 'number of marker switches on this island'," replied Jordan. "Do you think that they could be the switches we've been seeing everywhere?"

"Yeah, they must be!" exclaimed Rachel. "So how many were there? One here on the dock, one by the cogs and one by the round building..."

"One near the stone basin."

"One near the log cabin."

"One by the shed. That's six. Is that all?"

"No, we've missed one!" replied Rachel. "There was one by the rocket. The number we're looking for is seven." She fiddled the buttons until the screen read 07, then pressed the red button. A series of beeps sounded and the code sheet slid back down out of the wall. Jordan went over to the imager and pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

He pressed it again. Still nothing. Again. Still nothing.

"Do you think that this Catherine person might have already seen the message?" asked Rachel.

"No," replied Jordan, "because she would have taken the note with her. Maybe there's something wrong with the machine."

"Well, it was displaying the water pool alright a minute ago. Maybe you broke it!" Rachel replied teasingly. Jordan just shook his head.

"Hang on, we forgot about the clock tower! There was a switch next to it as well, but we couldn't reach it because it was offshore!" exclaimed Rachel. "The number is eight, not seven!" She quickly made the change to the panel and Jordan pressed the button again.

This time, the face of a man appeared in the imager. He sounded worried, and referred to his books being destroyed. Rachel assumed that he meant the books on the library shelf, but didn't see why that should be such a tragedy.

"I've removed the remaining undamaged books from the library and placed them in heir places of protection," continued the man. "You shouldn't have to use the books until I return, but if you've forgotten the access keys remember the tower rotation. Don't worry, Catherine, everything will be fine..."

Neither Rachel nor Jordan listened to the rest of the message. Two words had stuck in their minds.

They knew they had to get up to that tower.


	3. Haze

**2 – Haze**

"Too much blood! Making me feel faint! Can't catch my breath! I'm - "

"Oh pipe down, Jordan, you've only grazed your knee," sighed Rachel, busy washing his knee in the sea off the west coast. "Obviously climbing up to the tower from the outside isn't the right way to go about things."

"You're not wrong there, Rach," replied Jordan, switching from mock pain to serious planning in the blink of an eye. "There must be a way in from the library."

"It's beginning to look that way, but we did look in there..."

"Well, now that we've searched the rest of the island, it can't hurt to go over the library more thoroughly."

Rachel got to her feet and turned away from the clock tower. The sun was setting, and the library seemed to glow in the half-light. The warm northerly breeze had changed suddenly earlier on and become a rather chilly south-westerly wind, and she shivered. "C'mon," she said, and gestured at the library.

Jordan got to his feet, and instantly snapped back to mock pain, moaning and groaning and saying that his leg wasn't strong enough to take him up to the library. "You might have to carry me," he moaned to Rachel, the ghosts of a wicked grin tweaking the corners of his mouth.

Rachel pushed him into the ocean and ran.

* * *

After another fifteen minutes, which involved both Rachel and Jordan ending up in the ocean another four or five times, and some other things which shouldn't be discussed, they ended up in the library, both soaked through.

"That was rather refreshing," said Jordan conversationally, causing Rachel to break down into a fit of wild giggling.

Once she recovered, Rachel sat down in front of the bookshelf and examined it closely. The burnt books were blocking her view, but she thought that she could see the tiniest glint of light between the close-fitting wood of the shelves.

"What about these books?" asked Jordan, interrupting her thoughts, "They might have something useful in them, and they look far more intact than those ones."

Rachel got to her feet and went over to the large red book. There was a red sheet of paper next to it, possibly a page from the book. She opened the book.

"It's all totally incomprehensible," she said to Jordan, "not a lot of use."

Jordan leaned in to read over her shoulder. "That looks vaguely familiar... have we seen that somewhere before?"

A memory stirred somewhere deep in Rachel's mind... sand dunes... an ancient book... and this script. With a growing feeling of anticipation she turned to the last page. The left page was blank, but on the right page...

The small rectangular image on the right page swirled with red static, and at the same time a crackling, hissing static noise filled the library. Rachel closed the book and the noise immediately stopped, but her ears were ringing sharply. The library suddenly seemed to have been filled with the same red swirling static as in the book, and her head seemed to be filled with cotton wool, even as the library suddenly rotated by ninety degrees and the ground hit her hard in the side of the head...

* * *

Slowly, consciousness came trickling back to Rachel. The first thing that she sensed was a strong smell of pine. The next thing she sensed was the lump on the side of the head where the library floor had accosted her. She opened her eyes.

The library chandelier, which she had expected to see, was not there. Instead she was looking up at a sturdy wooden roof with beams criss-crossing over it. With great difficulty she sat up and looked around. She wasn't in the library – she was in the log cabin in the forest. Well, that explained the pine smell, anyway.

The light in the cabin seemed lower than last time she was in here. She got to her feet, wincing slightly as the blood pounded in her ears, and pushed the door open. The sky outside was a deep shade of purple – it was sunset. She had slept the day through. With her mind a bit clearer, she realised that she must have fainted, rather than had the library floor attack her. She stepped outside and looked towards the library. There was a small glint of light coming from behind the tower, suddenly making her realise that it was not dusk, but dawn – she had not only slept the whole day, but the whole night as well. The knock to her head must have been quite solid.

Jordan was in the library examining the few books left intact on the shelf when Rachel came in. He looked up immediately, much to her disappointment – she had intended to sneak up on him like he had to her on the night of their arrival on the island.

"These really are riveting, aren't they? Especially this one about the ship on the rocks." He was presumably referring to the supposed "journals" that made up five of the six intact books on the shelf. He was holding up the one that Rachel recognised as being about a place called the Rocks, or as it was referred to later in the book, the Stoneship Age.

"I quite liked that one there," said Rachel, indicating the journal at his feet bearing the image of a gear on the spine, "about the invaders and the fortress. That was really very good."

He opened it and skim-read it quickly. "If these are real places, they're very interesting, and if they're not, this man is a very good storyteller. Anyway, I combed this room from top to bottom whilst you were off having your nap..." (Rachel glared at him) "... and I think I'm finally making progress."

Rachel's frustration with him vanished on the spot – so he hadn't just been doing nothing whilst she was out cold.

"Firstly," he said, "this man, who is probably the same man we saw in the imager, this Atrus fellow, used to live on this island with his wife Catherine and two sons, Sirrus and Achenar."

"So where are they now?" asked Rachel.

"Of Atrus and Catherine there is no sign – Lord knows what happened to them; it could have been anything. The two sons, however, are still here." Registering Rachel's astounded expression with a shrewd smile, he continued, "They are imprisoned within those two books." He indicated the red and blue books. Notably, the pages that were there had disappeared. "Both of them want to be free from the book, and they don't want us to release the other one. They want us to return pages to their book, but there are no pages on this island! I can't fathom that.

"Anyway, more importantly, I found out about the tower rotation business. It's that map that's the key." He pointed to the map of the island hanging on the wall beside the door. "Go over to it," he said to Rachel, "and press and hold the image of the tower down."

Rachel did so, noting as she did that the tower was constantly flashing red. As soon as she touched the map, a line extended from the tower out to the edges of the map and rotated slowly around the map. Four times during the rotation it turned red and paused – over the cogs, the ship, the tree and the rocket. As soon as Rachel removed her finger from the tower, by chance when the line was directed at the ship, the words "TOWER ROTATION" appeared at the bottom of the map and a colossal rumbling noise reverberated through the library, like that of gears being turned. After a second, it stopped, the map returned to normal, and Rachel was left hanging in front of the map looking quite stunned.

"But that's amazing!" she said, sounding rather breathless.

"There's more. Come here." Jordan beckoned her to where he was standing, next to the painting of the passageway. She went over to him.

"Touch the painting."

"What?"

"_Touch_ the painting."

Rachel placed her right hand on the painting. The image swirled under her hand and she hurriedly tore her hand away, even as the picture reformed into the picture of the passage. A loud crashing noise was echoing through the library, making Rachel's head ring. The bookshelf was moving. The top two shelves slid backwards into the wall, and then pushed down into the ground, forming a sort of staircase leading up into a passageway set into the wall. The upper panel of the wall simply slid up out of sight, so that where a minute ago there had been a bookshelf, there was now a passage leading off into the rock.

Rachel swore loudly in disbelief. Jordan was already halfway up the stairs, and he motioned for her to follow. The passage wound through the rock a little, and eventually came out into a small chamber containing a smaller elevator.

Jordan opened the elevator and got in. He beckoned to Rachel.

"You must be joking, there's barely room for one in that thing!" she replied quickly.

"Well, that's never bothered you before now." Another fit of wild giggling from Rachel.

* * *

Eventually they both ended up in the tower. Rachel quickly surveyed the scene and saw that the tower was comprised of two small balconies on the upper level with two ladders leading up to them. She climbed the one directly in front of them, which bore a plaque with a book picture on it. There was a slit in the wall in front of her and she could look out at the ship.

"Come and look at this one, it's much more interesting!" called Jordan, indicating the other ladder, which bore a key symbol. Rachel climbed the key ladder and saw a plaque nailed to the wall. There was writing on it.

"October 11, 1984, 10:04AM," read Rachel; "January 17, 1207, 5:46AM; November 23, 9791, 6:57PM. What's all that, then?"

"They would appear," said Jordan in the voice he always used when about to give a smart alec answer, "to be dates and times."

She turned and came down the ladder, turned and faced him, and kicked him.

"Let's get out of here," he groaned.

They bundled back into the elevator. When they returned to the library level, Jordan jumped out of the elevator and went pelting down the corridor towards the exit. Rachel followed at a more measured pace, at least before she heard the crashing noise begin again. She ran back down the tunnel only to see the bookshelf closing up in front of her.

She swore at Jordan through the bookshelf, but received no reply. Unbeknownst to her, he had already made a break for the door.

There was a painting of the library hanging on the back of the bookshelf. She touched it and the crashing began again, opening the bookshelf back into the library. Jumping down from the tunnel back into the library, she saw for the first time that a heavy slab of rock was now covering the exit. She guessed that this was some sort of security feature to stop anyone outside the library getting access to the tower. She turned and touched the painting of the door, and the crashing began once more. The door slid open and the bookshelf closed noisily. And now, she thought to herself, to find that twit Jordan.

* * *

Eventually she found him crouching behind the dentist-like chair in the round building. After giving him a piece of her mind (and a few more kicks), she turned to the chair.

"Any idea what this does?" she asked Jordan.

"Oh yeah, that's another thing I found whilst you were napping yesterday. This is like an observatory. Go over to the door and hit that switch."

Rachel went to the door and pressed the button that was secured to the wall there. The lights went off and she could see stars on the ceiling.

"Now," he continued, "sit down in the chair and have a look at the control panel."

Rachel did just that, and saw that the control panel bore a set of controls allowing users to set a date and see the corresponding constellation. The panel currently read January 1, 0000, 12:00AM.

"Now think back to what you read in the tower," continued Jordan.

"So you think that this is the place to - "

"Oh yes. It couldn't be the clock tower, because there's no dates on the clock tower, just times. Here is where it fits, the constellations we get must help us do something else."

Rachel entered the first date into the machine and pressed the button. There was a whirring noise and a new constellation appeared on the screen. Rachel couldn't make head or tail of it.

Jordan leaned over and looked at the constellation as well. "Hang on..." he said slowly, "I think that looks familiar." He thought for a further minute, then snapped his fingers and ran straight out the door. Rachel made to follow him, but before she could get to the door he came back in carrying one of the journals from the library. Rachel recognised it as the one about the ship on the rocks.

Jordan opened the book to the end and flipped quickly through it. He finally stopped, turned the book around and tapped the left page. There was a constellation drawn carefully there – the same constellation, in fact, as was currently showing in the viewer – and under it there was a picture of a leaf. Rachel entered the other two dates into the machine and the constellations that they matched showed a snake and some sort of insect.

"So what do we do with these?" said Jordan.

"You tell me and we'll both know," replied Rachel. They sank into silence for a while, before something clicked in Jordan's brain.

* * *

Fifteen seconds later they were standing out by the stone basin. The eight stone pillars surrounding the basin were each engraved with a symbol, such as an arrow, some sort of bird, and more importantly, a leaf, a snake, and an insect.

Rachel went over to the leaf symbol and touched it. It glowed green briefly. Jordan touched the insect and it glowed green as well. Rachel touched the snake. It glowed green.

Nothing else happened.

"Is something supposed to happen?" asked Rachel.

"Well, I assume so," replied Jordan, "but so far whatever it is is very underwhelming." He leant back against the pillar with the arrow on it. The arrow glowed red.

A sudden rumbling, sucking sound echoed through the forest and the small model of the ship in the basin rose from the depths of the water. Rachel and Jordan both looked at it strangely for a minute, before Rachel spoke.

"Why did pressing on the arrow make everything work all of a sudden?"

"Because," Jordan said slowly, "when we were exploring the island a while ago we pressed on the arrow to try and work out what would happen. Presumably this only works when the correct three and the correct three only are pressed." He pressed on the eye symbol. It glowed green, and the rumbling began again. The ship sank back into the basin. Jordan pressed the eye again. It glowed red and the ship rose again.

"So what does it all mean?"

Rachel had her suspicions. She walked back to the entrance to the library and looked down towards the dock.

"Look," she said.

However uncanny it may have been, the ship next to the dock was now floating on the surface of the water, rather than being submerged up to the masts in the ocean. They both took the stairs down to the dock two at a time and in seconds were boarding the ship, which was remarkably sturdy despite the constant creaking of the timbers.

"But there's no sailing equipment, no sails, no oars, there's not even a steering wheel!" exclaimed Rachel. "What are we supposed to do here?"

"There must be something here," said Jordan confidently, "otherwise there would be no point putting such an elaborate lock on it."

Neither of them could see anything on the deck of the ship, and if there ever was anything, they reasoned, it would have been lost in the ocean. There was a small door under the stairs of the ship, so they decided to have a look in there.

The door opened onto a tiny room. In the room was a chair, and on the chair was a book.

Rachel shrank from the book, seeing as the last time she picked up a book on this island she had fainted. Jordan smiled grimly, stepped into the room and opened the book. It was filled with page upon page of the same incomprehensible script they had seen so many times before. On the last page, there was an image on the right page. It was clear, unlike the books in the library, and showed a large ship, seemingly built into a large rock, in the middle of a thunderstorm. And it was moving; the rain pounded on the surface of the ship and waves broke against the numerous rocks.

By this time, Rachel had got her courage up enough to look at the book as well. She grabbed Jordan's wrist. Jordan was examining the image closely. With his free arm, he raised his hand and touched the image lightly. The effect was instantaneous.

The room gave a sudden jerk that had nothing to do with the swaying of the ship. Rachel found her hand glued to Jordan's wrist, and Jordan tried and failed to remove his hand from the book. Then the ringing began. Just a dull hum at first, but then louder and louder until they could hear nothing else. The room faded to nothing in front of their eyes, they felt a sudden lurch, and then, just as they were growing used to the spinning blackness, it vanished. The solid ground returned. The ringing died, and the blackness dissolved. Rachel smelt the ocean, Jordan heard the crashing waves, and they both felt the stinging rain against their skin. They tore their eyes open.

They were on a ship. The rock that it was impaled on stuck out of the vast ocean like a spear, as did all the other hundreds of rocks. The waves crashed up against them and the rain poured down on it all. The island of Myst had vanished.


	4. Soak

**3 – Soak**

The first rays of dawn light, albeit choked by clouds, were a welcome sight to Rachel. Jordan had gone to sleep some hours ago, but she could not have slept. The pounding rain had not let up at all during the night and not a lot changed with the morning light. Rain was still teeming down onto the roof of the lighthouse, and the shattered window let in an awful draft. She got to her feet and went outside into the rain.

The sound of the rain beat her ears in a steady monotone, punctured every now and again by a rumble of thunder. The steady drops of rain stung her skin, but she barely noticed. She crossed the narrow plank leading over to the ship and made her way up to the telescope. She peered through it for a minute, but nothing had changed since yesterday. Still just rocks and the very top of the lighthouse. Being stranded on a peaceful island was one thing, but stuck on a broken ship impaled upon a jagged rock was another thing altogether.

Ship... impaled on a rock...

Rocks... stone... ship... The cogs in Rachel's brain were whirring up to speed now. The shock of ending up here so suddenly and the unpleasant sensation of whatever you would call the way she left Myst so suddenly and was landed here had messed with her brain temporarily, but now she was beginning to make connections. Turning on her heel, she ran back down the rock towards the lighthouse.

* * *

"No, I did not decide that I felt like a quick swim!" shouted Rachel five minutes later, icy water still dripping from her hair. "I slipped on the rock, all right?"

Jordan had been just waking when Rachel had fallen into the freezing ocean, which she very quickly discovered was nothing like the calm waters of Myst. He had hastened outside to help her out, but could not resist making a few of his infamous bad jokes once he had pulled her out, brought her back into the lighthouse and wrapped her in his jacket. Although she had only been in the water very briefly her toes had turned blue and her teeth were chattering. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was warmer.

"All right, all right..." said Jordan, still fighting down laughter. "So what should we do now?"

"Well," replied Rachel, teeth still chattering, "as it's raining I would suggest we go and examine that umbrella more closely. There were some buttons under there, remember?" With that, they left the lighthouse back into the pouring rain.

* * *

The volcano loomed dark and menacing up ahead. Maddy glanced briefly up at it, before continuing her trek across the parched desert. Her car was thoroughly useless past the end of the road, which was a good kilometre from the volcano compound.

Maddy was 17, six months younger than Rachel and with a crop of hair that had earnt her the unpleasant nickname "Mop" from a number of people in the town. Nobody had seen Jordan or Rachel for the past few days, which was unusual because Jordan was in town practically every other day (he was always running out of bread, for some unknown reason). Maddy had decided to pay them a visit, to check that everything was all right.

The desert was flat as anything, so the walk was relatively easy and there was no chance of losing her way, as the volcano was easily visible even from the road. Maddy reached the large, flat-topped rock which marked five hundred metres and stopped for a short rest.

"I bet," she muttered to herself, "that whatever those two are doing they are not nearly as warm as this."

If only she knew.

* * *

After the unpleasant experience of a dip in the ocean, the thoughts that Rachel had had whilst up by the telescope had been temporarily driven from her mind. Now, however, as circulation began to return to her toes, she remembered why she had come running down the rock in the first place, and told Jordan quickly before she forgot.

"This place is like that place described in that journal you were reading back on Myst. The Stoneship Age, or whatever."

"But there were supposed to be people there," replied Jordan. "This place is deserted, at least as far as we know." He pressed the leftmost button under the umbrella almost absent-mindedly.

A slight buzz of electricity hummed through the air and a low rumbling, sucking sound came from the ship. Jordan pulled his hand off the button. It was glowing a dull yellow.

Cautiously, Jordan walked back over to the ship. Everything seemed the same, until he looked down at the passage leading to the innards of the ship. Five minutes ago, when they crossed over to get here, the passage was flooded. Now, the water had drained away. Still walking on eggshells, Jordan crept down the passage towards the door at the bottom.

Rachel, still standing near the buttons, suddenly felt very cold and sick. Putting her hand out to steady herself, she bent down with her stomach churning. Whether it was hunger, something rotten she'd eaten or the effects of the link finally catching up with her, it wasn't pleasant.

Over the pounding rain, she heard a buzz, rushing water, a shout and running footsteps. Jordan came pelting out of the passageway.

"What are you playing at?" he shouted over the pump and the rain.

Confused for a minute, Rachel soon realised that she had put her hand out to steady herself and pressed the middle button accidentally. Apparently the pump could only drain one area at a time. She couldn't help laughing.

Jordan, after seeing the funny side of what had just happened and having a bit of a laugh as well, noticed that the tunnels leading down into the rock had drained this time. "I'm not going down there, it's dark. What about the last one?"

Rachel pressed the rightmost button and Jordan discovered that this had drained the lighthouse. Rachel crossed back to the ship and together they went to examine the lighthouse.

* * *

The gate was unlocked. Maddy pushed it open and walked inside the volcano compound. Nothing seemed different from the last time she was here, except for some new dunes over by the volcano. All was quiet except for the occasional cry of a bird.

Maddy quickly made it to the house. She knocked on the door, but there was no reply.

"Perhaps they're out walking together again," she murmured. "Cuties..."

* * *

The lower level of the lighthouse, now that it had been drained of water, yielded nothing but a large chest, locked tight.

"There was a key bolted to the floor up on the walkway," said Rachel, "could we get it up there?"

Jordan pushed at the chest, but only succeeded in moving it an inch. They heard water sloshing around inside.

"Hey, there's a valve on the side!" Jordan exclaimed suddenly, and bent down to turn it. A lot of water rushed out, but nothing else. He closed the valve again looking disappointed.

"This is all very depressing," he muttered darkly.

Rachel hugged him. "We'll pull through."

* * *

The innards of the ship were very dark. Rachel had opened the door at the bottom of the passageway, stepped in and suddenly discovered that there was more stairs on the other side of the door as she fell down them. Then it was her turn for a hug.

She and Jordan emerged back into the light, Rachel nursing a large bruise on her head. Jordan glanced over at the lighthouse and suddenly pointed over at it. "Look!"

Rachel looked. The chest that they had found was floating on top of the water, right next to the key on the floor. She blinked. It wasn't a hallucination. The water that they had drained out of the chest, she reasoned, must have been keeping it down. Now it was airtight and buoyant.

They hurried over to the lighthouse, as fast as they dared in these conditions. The key bolted to the floor was attached to a chain, and the chain was just long enough to reach the key over to the chest. Jordan unlocked it and the lid sprang open. He and Rachel peered eagerly inside. There was absolutely nothing there except a large key.

Jordan glanced from the key to the locked hatch at the top of the ladder leading up into the top of the lighthouse and chuckled. He picked the key up, climbed the ladder quickly and unlocked the hatch. It swung open with a swift creak, and he climbed up into the upper room, Rachel following quickly behind him.

The top of the lighthouse was surprisingly warm. The faint rays of the sun, although still choked by the clouds, warmed the room pleasantly, and although they could hear the wind whistling through the hatch leading back down, it did not reach them. The room was empty except for what looked like a small hand generator and a small battery pack. A gauge on the side of the batteries showed that they were thoroughly dry.

"Stand back," murmured Jordan, and he reached for the handle on the generator. Gingerly, he turned it once. It rumbled slightly, and the tiniest drops of power were shown on the battery gauge, but nothing else happened. He continued turning it, and the gauge steadily filled until it was full.

"So," said Rachel, "what did that do?"

Jordan pointed out the window at the tunnels in the rock. Lights were now flickering inside them, lighting up the crudely cut passages.

* * *

After waiting for half an hour, Maddy had started to walk around the volcano compound looking for Rachel and Jordan. As far as she could see, they were nowhere to be seen, but they could still easily be hiding amidst the dunes, down in the cleft or up on the volcano.

She paced the dunes for ten minutes, until she was thoroughly satisfied that they were not there. This was thirsty work, and she had left her water in the car. Annoyed now, she cupped her hands over her mouth and shouted.

"Guys, this isn't funny any more! If you're somewhere around here, will you please come out now?!"

No reply. Employing a few choice swear words and massaging her now parched throat, she turned to the volcano.

* * *

Rachel stepped into the room at the bottom of the tunnel. It was clean and very neat, with a sharply made bed, a desk and numerous drawers. Jordan had said to search the rooms top to bottom, so she did. Under the bed, through all the papers on the desk, through the desk drawers and finally the chest of drawers against the wall. She pulled open the top few drawers. One was filled with coins, one with various fabrics (one of which looked vaguely familiar), one with what looked like drugs and poisons. The next drawer was empty. But in the next drawer there was a red piece of paper with incomprehensible writing all over it. There was no doubt in her mind that this was one of the pages connected with the book in the Myst library. She put it in her pocket and left the room. Halfway up the stairs, however, she noticed a small panel bearing a red square on the wall. She pressed on it and it slid up into the wall, revealing a small passageway. She crawled cautiously inside.

* * *

Jordan took one look at the shabby, unkempt room at the bottom of the second tunnel and grimaced. There was not an inch of the room that was clean. The bed was unmade with filthy sheets, and there were ribcages hanging from the wall. He took a few deep breaths and started to search the room. On top of one of the chests of drawers he found a strange imager that showed a rose turning into a skull, but inside the drawers he found half of a piece of paper that bore some sort of instructions. He put it in the pocket as he had seen something on it about marker switches. Glancing over at the bed, he suddenly noticed that there was another piece of paper on the bed. This one was not torn and was dull blue – almost certainly, he thought, a page from the book in the Myst library. Putting this in his pocket as well, he left the room, but part way up the stairs he noticed something he hadn't seen before. There was a panel in the wall marked with a red square. H e pressed on it and it slid up into the wall. He crawled inside, holding his breath.

* * *

The room in the middle of the rock was small and round, with two passages leading off it. Rachel emerged from the left passage, and at exactly the same time Jordan emerged from the right passage. Both caught sight of each other at exactly the same time, yelled and jumped backwards into the passages, before realising who they had seen and bursting out laughing.

"So what did you find?" Rachel asked Jordan.

"Well, there was this," he said, extracting the torn note from his pocket. "I thought it might be useful. And there was this..." (he pulled out the blue page) "...which I'm sure will be useful."

"So will this, I'm sure." Rachel pulled the red page from her pocket and they both smiled.

"Now, what's this room?" The room was dominated by a large compass surrounded by buttons, thirty-two to be exact. Rachel crouched down and examined it.

"Well, one of these has to do something," she said, and before Jordan could lift a finger she had pressed the button at due north.

The effect was instantaneous. There was a click, and the room was plunged into darkness. Dim blue light flashed from the passages and an alarm began to wail loudly.

Jordan and Rachel ran down the left passage a bit too fast, leapt out into the tunnel and fell down the stairs, landing in a large heap just inside the room that Rachel had searched, which was rather strangely still lit.

"What happened?" said Rachel, now nursing a second bruise, this one on her elbow.

"I don't know... the battery might have blown up when you pressed that button... or," Jordan added hastily, as Rachel had given him a scathing look, "it might just have discharged, which is probably more likely..."

They felt their way up the tunnel back into the welcome light of the surface and hurried to the lighthouse. Jordan's prediction – the latter one – proved to be correct when they discovered that the batteries were indeed intact, but dry, and a few turns on the generator charged them back up again.

"One of those buttons has to help us a bit, but we can't just try all of them, we might damage the battery, and we can't afford that," reasoned Jordan, more to himself than to Rachel. "There must be something that would help us work out which one it is. Did you see anything in that room you searched?"

"Nothing," replied Rachel.

"Well, we'd better sit down for a bit," said Jordan, "and get our bearings on this situation."

"Hang on a minute..." Rachel said suddenly, "Bearings?"

She leapt to her feet and scrambled down the ladder. Jordan followed her, reminding her not to run on the rocks. Within a minute they were up by the telescope.

"Look in there," said Rachel, "and tell me what you see."

Jordan looked. "Rocks, rocks, rocks, a bit of the ship, the top of the lighthouse, and rocks."

"Right. What's the bearing of the top of the lighthouse?"

"Hang on," said Jordan, and he checked again. "One thirty-five. This is supposed to help us, I suppose?"

"Yes, it is. Because on a compass, a bearing of one hundred and thirty-five degrees is exactly south-east."

* * *

Her feet aching, throat parched and sweat forming on her brow, Maddy climbed down into the cool shade of the cleft. She made immediately for the small fresh pool on the ground. The water tasted rather earthy, but was drinkable and soothed her throat. With renewed energy, she stood up.

"I know you're here somewhere," she muttered, "and when I find you, I swear..." She didn't complete the sentence; instead preferring to start searching the cleft.

* * *

Returning to the now properly lit room in the rock, Rachel stooped over the compass again.

"I hope this works," she muttered, and pressed the button at south-east.

The room, rather than going dark, brightened suddenly. Rachel straightened up and saw that large underwater lamps had gone on outside the room. She smiled, knowing what this meant, and went to rejoin Jordan in the lighthouse.

* * *

The cleft was empty. Swearing again, Maddy emerged back into the desert sun and returned to the house. She tried the door handle. It wasn't locked. She went inside. She couldn't think of anywhere else they could be. She started to search the small house from top to bottom.

The kitchen was last. Maddy stepped into the kitchen and noticed something sitting on the table. It was a large, rather old looking book.

* * *

The innards of the ship were not dark any more. The underwater lamps had lit the room up so that it was easy to see that they were in the main cabin of the ship. Cautiously, Rachel and Jordan went inside, down the stairs towards the bottom.

There was nothing there, nothing except a large wooden table.

Jordan muttered darkly under his breath. "I thought for sure that there would be some sort of way out down here." He leant on the table.

A hiss like escaping air sounded suddenly. Jordan leapt like he'd just been stung, even as the table started to change shape. A large rectangular lump was now forming in the middle of the table. Even as they watched, dumbfounded, it solidified and changed colour. It was now grey, sitting on top of the table.

Rachel cautiously approached it and looked down at it. It was a small book, weathered with age, but with one word still clear on the front cover – Myst. She opened it. It was filled with page after page of incomprehensible script, and on the back page...

She smiled at Jordan, and laid a hand on the page. The room gave a jolt, blackness enveloped her, and the next thing she knew she was standing in a rather familiar room. The chandelier cast a twinkling light over the burnt books on the wall, and outside, the clock tower was silhouetted perfectly against a setting sun.

A soft ringing pierced the silence, the air next to her shimmered vaguely and Jordan stepped out of nothing next to her.

"Well, we made it," he said, "and I think we've earnt a rest." Before they could even sit down, however, the softest sound pierced the air again – a now familiar ringing.

"Did you hear that?"

"Yes," replied Jordan. They ran from the room and down towards the dock. Before they had even passed the observatory, however, it was clear that there was something – or someone – there that was not there when they left.

In seconds they were on the dock, crouching over the unconscious shape. It looked familiar to both of them, and as Rachel surveyed the figure's head, the hair was a dead giveaway.


	5. Organ

**4 – Organ**

"And that's all we know," finished Rachel. She and Jordan had just spent twenty minutes explaining the events of the past few days to Maddy, who had woken up about half an hour after linking in and had been rendered, for the first time since Rachel had known her, speechless by the sudden change of scenery.

"But how are we supposed to -"

"Get home?" finished Jordan heavily. "We don't have a clue, Mop. That's why we're running around finding these pages, hoping that once these two are a little more comprehensible, they'll be able to help us."

"So you've said," replied Maddy, "and don't call me Mop. How many pages are there?"

Jordan glanced at Rachel. "Well, we'd be guessing at best, but I wouldn't say more than three or four."

"I'd say three, myself," said Rachel, "based on the map. Remember, there were four locations marked in red; we've been to one, which leaves three."

The night was now well advanced; the sky outside the library was pitch black, dotted in places by stars. Rachel got to her feet and went outside, but rather than going down towards the forest, she turned and headed towards the dock.

"Where are you going?" asked Jordan when he and Maddy had followed her outside.

"I call the bed in Stoneship tonight," replied Rachel with a grin spreading over her face. Jordan cursed.

* * *

Morning came and went, but Myst remained still as anything. It wasn't until about half past one that Jordan rose from the grass near the fountain (Maddy had called the cabin, and he wasn't sleeping in the library). In the afternoon light, he went up to the library and approached the map. Touching the tower, he rotated the line until it came to rest on the rocket. The clattering of the gears under the library woke Maddy from her sleep in the cabin, and she came up to the library as well.

"What are you doing moving about this early?" asked Jordan, a devilish grin forming on his face. Before Maddy could reply, however, a soft ringing pierced the air and Rachel shimmered into being next to Jordan.

"Time for further action?" she asked, and Jordan nodded.

Rachel, who was closest, went over to the painting of the passageway and pressed on it to open the passage. She did not, however, go down to the elevator.

"We can't possibly fit three of us in that tiny elevator!" she exclaimed to Jordan.

"You're right. Perhaps we should just send one of us up there."

* * *

Rachel stumbled out of the elevator back at the bottom and hurried back down the passage to the library, where Jordan and Maddy were waiting.

"Well?" asked Jordan. "What did it say?"

"Maybe you can make more sense of it than I can," said Rachel, "but it said '59 Volts'."

There was silence for a minute. Jordan and Maddy were digesting this. Then Maddy piped up suddenly.

"This is all supposed to link back to the rocket, isn't it?"

"Yes," replied Rachel.

"Well, aren't there some power lines connected to the rocket? Why don't we follow them and see where that takes us?"

* * *

The lines from the rocket ran through the pine forest, violating, Rachel thought, who knows how many fire safety regulations, and ended at the small brick shed. Jordan went inside, not expecting to find anything different from before, but then he gave a shout.

"There's some stairs down here that we didn't see before!"

Rachel and Maddy followed him into the shed and down the stairs. They ran curving down into the ground and finally ended at a large door with a blue button on one side. Jordan pressed the button and the door opened smoothly. Lights came on in the next room, illuminating what was there.

There was a small room beyond the door, bearing a smallish control panel. On the far wall was a glass window, and beyond the window was a long room containing ten large generators.

The control panel bore ten buttons and two gauges. Both gauges read "00" and all the buttons were off.

"So what do all these do?" asked Rachel.

"Only one way to find out," said Jordan, and he pressed the fourth button on the left side. A rumbling hum filled the air – one of the generators had started up. Both gauges now read "16".

Jordan continued to press buttons at random until finally the left gauge read "66". The right gauge, however, had gone back to zero.

"Jordan, I think you broke something," said Maddy, grinning wickedly.

Jordan glared at her and switched all the generators off. He disappeared up the stairs. By the time Rachel and Maddy had made their minds up to follow him, he was on his way back down.

"One of the breakers on the towers tripped. Obviously we have to transmit fifty-nine volts, and no more, to the rocket." He started pressing buttons again, noting how much power each generated before turning them back off and moving on to the next button. When he had done all ten, he paused for a minute and started muttering to himself, pointing to each button and occasionally pressing one of them. Finally, he announced that he had solved it. Rachel and Maddy crowded around to watch him.

He pressed the fourth button on the left. The gauges read "16". He pressed the second button on the right. The gauges read "18". Next was the third button on the left. Now the gauges read "40".

"All right, here goes," he said, and pressed the fourth button on the right.

* * *

The rocket was rather small, and the three of them just squeezed into it. On one side was a porthole and some sliders; on the other was an old-fashioned pipe organ. Rachel took one look at the organ keyboard, gave an excited sort of squeak and ran outside. Before Maddy or Jordan could follow her, she was back, clutching one of the books from the library and flipping through it frantically. Finally, she held it up for Jordan (who was closest to the porthole) to see. There was a diagram of an organ in the back of the book, and five keys were numbered.

"Move one of those sliders, will you?"

Jordan grabbed at the first slider and moved it up and down. Even as he touched it, a low note came from small speakers to either side of the porthole. As he moved the slider up, the note got steadily higher and higher, until he had to move it back down again, it was too high pitched.

Rachel squeezed her way over to the organ and pressed the key that she now knew corresponded with the first slider. It was down the left of the keyboard, and the note was quite low.

"Can you set that first slider to match this note?"

The answer was no, he couldn't. Jordan had never had quite the ear for music that Rachel did, and however hard he tried, he couldn't get the note to match exactly. Maddy, who prided herself on her musical ear, gave an exasperated sigh and pushed him out of the way. Fiddling the slider, she had soon matched the note perfectly.

Smiling, Rachel touched the key marked with the number two. "This is the second slider," she said to Maddy as a high note hummed from the organ. Within a minute or two, she had matched the note again.

They continued through the third, the fourth and the fifth. Finally, when Maddy had matched the fifth note, she flicked the small lever to the side of the sliders. The five notes played quickly.

Nothing happened.

Passing the book to Maddy, Rachel crossed to the sliders and listened carefully to each of them in turn. "Play that fourth one again, will you?" she said to Maddy, who pressed on the keyboard after consulting the book.

Rachel, after listening to this for a few seconds, moved the fourth slider down by about a millimetre and pushed the lever again. The notes played again, and this time a very small buzz came after the last note.

The three of them looked around quickly, but nothing seemed to have changed. It wasn't until Rachel looked back at the sliders that she saw that the porthole had lit up, and there was an image projected onto it against a background of swirling green static – a book, exactly like the one in the ship.

Rachel touched the porthole lightly. The book image disappeared, immediately replaced with a flickering image of a rocket that looked virtually identical to the one they now stood in. A vague hissing noise was coming from the speakers now, like a badly tuned radio, and the image in the porthole was constantly flickering with static. Still nervous, Rachel touched the porthole again.

A sudden jolt, and then all of a sudden the now almost familiar spinning blackness closed around her, and within seconds it had vanished, and she was collapsing onto the floor of the rocket. Or at least, it looked like the rocket. Jordan and Maddy weren't there, and the sliders had rest themselves to the bottom again. She pulled herself to her feet. The door was closed.

The air rang and shimmered, and Rachel ran forward to catch Maddy, who had just appeared as well. Within a few seconds, Jordan had stepped out of the air next to Rachel, looking rather sick and dizzy.

"All right, come on, let's get out of this accursed rocket," said Rachel as soon as they had all regained some level of composure, and she went to the door and touched it. It slid open. Maddy gasped. Rachel groaned. Jordan sighed.

The causeway leading away from the rocket was choked with a heavy blue fog. They stumbled out of the rocket, and it slid closed behind them. As they walked along the causeway, the fog thinned, and they were able to see where they were.

The island in front of them was barren and rocky. A few large tower-like structures stood around it, and there was a small patch of grass and trees off at one of the far peaks. Set into the rock just ahead of them was a door, firmly locked and with a conrol panel next to it. They had no idea what any of this was, or who had built it. But one thing was for certain – the island of Myst was gone.


	6. Tune

**5 – Tune**

The characteristic fog of the Selenitic Age hung heavily over the midnight sky, all but obscuring the stars from view. Jordan, Rachel and Maddy were all asleep on the grass under the trees near the stream. They had decided on this area as the best place to sleep. It was comfortable – the air was warm, but there was a pleasant breeze blowing in from the north up here – but the disadvantage was that the constant trickling of the stream had made each of them run to take a leak at least once.

They had combed the Age as best they could in the time between their arrival and nightfall, and they had found a red page and a blue page. It turned out that there were five altar-like structures around the Age – water, where they were sleeping now and where they had found the blue page, fire, near a large fiery chasm, gears, near a broken clock tower similar to the one on Myst, crystal, in the middle of a large field of crystals growing from the water where they had found the red page, and wind, over a large tunnel that the wind whistled through eerily. The tunnel itself led under the lake to a small island in the centre housing some strange controls. They had no time to discover what they did, however, as night was falling and they guessed, correctly as it turned out, that due to the fog the night was going to be pitch dark, and they returned quickly to the water altar to sleep. Little did they know that they had arrived on the Selenitic Age at a very bad time.

The Selenitic Age had always been a very volatile and volcanic place. Seismic and cosmic activity occurred relatively often, but unbeknownst to Jordan, Rachel and Maddy, the Age had been going through a calm period for the last few months. The calm before the storm, one could call it.

* * *

The desert road was in no uncertain fashion a road less travelled. Jordan and Rachel were practically the only people to use it, which made it not a lot more than a strip of gravel dumped on the ground and driven over a few times. Brittany's car, more generally suited for city roads and carrying large loads, was not suited to this sort of road. Before she had even made it to the end, the engine stopped with an ominous clunk, and stayed stopped.

Cursing loudly, Brittany got out of the car and gave it a solid kick in the side. This achieved nothing but to give her a sore toe and make her even more annoyed.

Brittany was almost 18, six months older than Rachel and a similar age to Jordan. She was recognised in the town by her short crop of dark red hair and her fiery diplomatic skills, which had recently earnt her a place on the town council.

Unfortunately, cars in general don't respond very well to diplomacy. Hopping back to the open door, she nursed her toe for a minute, before grabbing her water and hat and setting off down the road.

* * *

A low rumble softly pierced the steady trickle of the stream. Rachel murmured something in her sleep, rolled over and continued sleeping. But not for long. The rumbling grew steadily louder and louder, even as the air grew hotter and hotter until all three of them woke with a gasp.

"What -"

Jordan's voice was drowned out by the rumbling of the quake, which had grown to a monstrous volume. The ground was shaking violently, but that was not all.

Without warning, everything became suddenly brighter. Rachel looked around for the source of the light as best she could without being thrown onto her back. Her companions were doing the same. Maddy stumbled and fell, but even as she looked up at the sky, she gave a very uncharacteristic scream and pointed up. Jordan and Rachel followed her arm, and what they saw made their blood run cold.

Through the thick fog, at least four dozen huge fiery meteors were hurtling towards the ground. Rachel, too, screamed, even as the quaking earth threw her and Jordan to the ground. She didn't dare look up. Throwing her arms over her head, she closed her eyes, as the rumbling increased to a deafening volume and the shouting voices of Jordan and Maddy were drowned out by it and the now even more terrifying noise of the meteors hitting the ground. Perhaps, she thought to herself, we've finally reached the end of the road...

* * *

At the end of the road, Brittany sank down onto the gravel and rested for a few minutes. Maddy's car was parked nearby, but there was no sign of Maddy herself. She, Rachel and Jordan had been missed in the town for over a week now, and this was not a good sign, so Brittany had decided to come out and check on them. With a stab of frustration, she realised that she had left her lunch in the car. It was a good two kilometres back, and there was still a kilometre to walk to the volcano compound, although she could easily see the volcano from here. Looking up at it, she wiped her brow, got to her feet and walked on towards the dark shape on the horizon.

* * *

Maddy opened her eyes. Deep purple choked the entire sky. The ground was perfectly still. The steady trickle of water filled her ears. She sat up slowly.

The first thing she thought as her head cleared was that, unless the afterlife looked very much like the Selenitic Age after a meteor shower, she was very much alive. She stood up and surveyed the island quickly.

Large chunks of rock littered the Age, both from the meteors and bits of the island, but oddly enough none of the huge towers near the altars had been touched, nor had the island in the middle of the lake. One or two of the crystals had a large rock embedded in it, but other than that the Age seemed more or less intact. Strangely, the grassy area where they had been sleeping had not been touched by a single rock. Looking up at the trees, Maddy saw that they, at least, had helped in this feat, as numerous rocks were caught in the branches.

Jordan was on the ground near the altar. He, too, was sitting up, shaking his head, and looking around. He, however, was looking around on the ground.

"Where's Rachel?"

These words struck Maddy like a rock to the head, and the effect had nothing to do with the small stone that dropped from the tree above her. Turning, ignoring the renewed aches in her head, she searched frantically for the third figure who she knew – or at least, she hoped – would be lying around here somewhere...

At last, she saw what she was looking for. Rachel was lying on the ground at the bottom of the hill. She, however, was not sitting up. Maddy and Jordan ran down the hill to Rachel. Maddy got to her first. There was a largish rock lying on the ground next to her head. With a thrill of horror, Maddy realised what had happened – when Rachel had fallen she had fallen down the hill, away from the protective canopy of the trees, and into the range of the meteors.

By then Jordan had reached the bottom of the hill as well, and was wearing a look of horror on his face. Maddy grabbed Rachel's left arm and felt her wrist carefully. Jordan examined the place where the rock had hit her. There was a trickle of blood running down through her hair, but really, he thought, it doesn't look too serious... please don't let it be serious...

"Well," said Maddy suddenly, startling Jordan, "she's not dead, but she's not in a good way. Let's get her back up the hill and cleaned up a bit."

* * *

Brittany knew the walk through the desert as being a gruelling one, but it seemed even worse today. Admittedly it was the middle of June and the summer solstice was approaching, but still, it seemed to be a worse walk than the last time she had done it. Indeed, it was only with great effort that she made it to the gate. Perhaps it was the extra two kilometres she had had to walk, or maybe she had simply neglected to walk for a while. However, either way she was grateful to make it to the door of the house. It was open, which wasn't unusual, but when she first knocked, then called out, nobody came to the door. She went inside.

* * *

Five o'clock had arrived and Jordan was starting to get worried. The sun was beginning to get lower in the fog-choked sky, and there was still no change in Rachel's condition. Maddy had spent the day watching over her and doing what she could for her, whilst Jordan hovered around the island, too anxious to stay still. He had been busying himself with the controls on the island, and had indeed managed to fiddle them until they played sounds being broadcast from each altar in a particular order, but he was really too restless to worry about what that might mean.

Maddy emerged from the tunnel behind him. "Having any luck?"

"Yeah, well, I made it do this..." He pressed a button on the controls and the sounds played again – a piping, flute-like noise from the crystal altar, the familiar trickle of water from the water altar, the mournful wind from the wind altar, the rumbling of the chasm from the fire altar, and the strained grinding, chiming clock from the gear altar. Maddy seemed to make a lot more of this than he had done, as a sudden smile lit her face, she grabbed his arm and pulled him back down towards the tunnel.

"Hey, hang on, Mop, where are we going?"

"Back to that door near the rocket, and don't call me Mop."

* * *

Brittany had been inside the house for quite a while now. She must have dozed off at one point, because when she went to the window the desert sky was turning red in the light of the setting sun. There was still no sign of Jordan, Rachel or Maddy.

Now that the sun was setting, Brittany decided to go for a quick walk around the compound. She would expect Jordan and Rachel to be back from any walks they might have gone on before sunset, but as there was still no sign of them there was nothing else for it.

* * *

Maddy and Jordan stood in front of the locked door. Maddy was busily examining the panel next to the door. It resembled the panel in the rocket back on Myst, except a lot simpler. Instead of various tunes, there were various different sounds that each slider could play – and five of those matched the sounds from the control panel.

Jordan was not even looking at the door. He kept casting his eyes back up to the hill where they had spent the night, and where Rachel still lay. He barely even heard Maddy calling his name, but he felt it when she kicked him in the shins.

"All right, all right, I'm listening, Mop..."

"I think I've figured this out, and don't call me Mop." She pressed a button on the panel, and the five sounds that she had set onto the sliders played quickly – a piping, flute-like noise, the familiar trickle of water, the mournful wind, the rumbling of a chasm, and the grinding, chiming clock. There was a clanging noise, and the door slid open.

"Wait here." Maddy disappeared down the passage into the rock behind the door. It slid smoothly shut again. Jordan waited for a minute, before the door opened again and Maddy emerged from inside.

"There's some sort of tram down there; I think it might be our way out. Get Rachel."

Jordan didn't need telling twice. He went back to the water altar and picked up Rachel, who was still unconscious. He returned to the door and followed Maddy inside.

* * *

Brittany pushed the door of the house open and walked back inside. She was getting tired, and the sky was beginning to dull from red to purple. Sinking back down in the chair, she decided not to search any more tonight. Give it until morning, she thought, and surely they'll have turned up by then.

* * *

The tram was quite small, but the three of them fit inside in relative comfort (after the rocket, it was very spacious). Maddy sat down in the chair in front of the porthole and examined the controls.

"So what do they do, Mop?"

"Well, there's only one way to find out, and don't call me Mop." Maddy pressed the large button marked "Forward".

The tram jolted and descended down into the ground. It came to rest in an intersection of several tracks. A small speaker to the left of the buttons made a plinking noise. A small dial on the right showed that they were currently pointing north.

Pressing more buttons that turned the tram, Maddy soon discovered that the north track was the only one that was open. She pressed the "Forward" button, and the tram moved forward, stopping at another intersection. This time, the speaker made a noise a bit like a tuning fork on the side of a table, and this time the only open path was to the west. Coming to rest at another intersection, the speaker made a plinking noise again. This time, however, there were two open paths – north and south-west.

As Maddy was trying to work out which path to take, Jordan intervened. "Isn't that the same noise it made at the start? Maybe the sound indicates which way we should go."

Maddy glanced at Jordan. She was impressed – it was the most intelligent thing she'd heard him say for a long while. She rotated the tram to north and continued on. The next sound was a hiss of escaping air, and the paths open were west and east.

"Well," she reasoned, "we've already had west, so this must be east." Again, they moved forward, and another hiss of air came from the speaker. "East again..." The next sound was a cowbell-like sound. The open paths were west, north and south.

Again, she reasoned that they had already had west and north, so this sound must be south. Moving on again, the next sound was a cowbell again. The next sound, however, was a mix of a cowbell and a tuning fork.

"Wouldn't that be south-west?" asked Jordan. "It would seem strange to make another sound for secondary directions when they could just combine two of the cardinals."

Maddy was willing to bet that Jordan had not understood half of what he just said, but she realised that he was right again. The south-west path was open, so she followed it.

After a long while in the tram, the speaker played a cowbell and a hiss of air, for south-east. Rotating the tram again, Maddy sent it forward, but this time they found themselves in a long, brightly-lit tunnel. At the end of the tunnel was a smallish room. This time, when the tram stopped, there was no noise.

Maddy got to her feet. She was slightly dizzy after that ride, but nonetheless she went over to the door and opened it. It was surprisingly cool outside, considering that it had been swelteringly hot inside the tram for the last fifteen minutes. Jordan followed with Rachel, who hadn't exactly been helped by the wild ride through the tunnels.

Maddy walked up to a small door in the wall and pushed it open. There was a spacious chamber inside, similar to the room where the tram had started originally. A short set of stairs led up to a small pedestal in the centre of the room. Maddy climbed the stairs quickly and looked down at what was on the pedestal. Jordan followed closely behind, still supporting Rachel. He gave a weak chuckle when he saw what was on the pedestal.

Maddy opened the book. Completely ignoring the incomprehensible script, she turned quickly to the last page. She planted her hand firmly on the page, blackness closed around her again and the next thing she knew she was standing in the Myst library, shaking off the still rather unpleasant sensation of the link. She turned and stepped outside. It was mid-morning, and it was very nice to see they sky again after looking at the fog-choked sky of the Selenitic Age for the last twenty-four hours.

The soft ringing from behind her marked the arrival of Jordan and Rachel, and Jordan stepped out of the library behind her. He headed straight for the dock.

"Where are you going?"

"To Stoneship, it'll do Rachel the world of good to lie down in a proper bed. You stay here, come and get me if anything happens."

* * *

Dawn broke over the dark volcano, but there was still no sign of Jordan or Rachel. Brittany got to her feet with a groan and headed for the kitchen, as she hadn't eaten since breakfast yesterday.

She entered the kitchen and immediately noticed the book lying on the table, opened to the last page. She looked down at the book curiously.

* * *

The clean underground room decorated in red was a nice change from the pouring rain from outside. Jordan sat, still worried, on the side of the bed. Rachel still hadn't stirred at all.

Running footsteps rang from outside, and the door opened with a clang. Maddy ran into the room, her hair plastered to her face from the streaming rain.

"Jordan... we've got a problem."


	7. Clock

**6 – Clock**

It was half past five. The skies of Myst had turned an ominous shade of dark grey, and a cold wind had blown in from the north. Jordan, Maddy and Brittany sat in a small circle just outside the cabin. Jordan and Maddy had just finished explaining the events of the past few days to Brittany, who was originally having a hard time believing it, but had been convinced eventually.

"All right?" asked Jordan, breaking the silence, "I want to get back to Stoneship."

"Yeah, I'll come with you," replied Maddy. Brittany, who looked slightly ill, just nodded. All three of them got up and made for the ship.

Considering Rachel had been out cold well and truly for the last day, Jordan was rather alarmed when he arrived back on Stoneship and discovered that she wasn't there. Turning and bolting back up the stairs, he almost collided with Maddy and Brittany, who had been going the other way.

"She's not there; I suppose we must have just missed each other."

Emerging back into the rain, the three of them were about to make straight for the passage leading down into the ship, before the air shimmered vaguely and Rachel appeared, looking still rather pale but a lot more awake than a few hours ago.

"I see you're awake," said Jordan.

"I see we have company," replied Rachel, looking at Brittany.

* * *

Five minutes later all four of them were back on Myst, only to discover that it was now raining just as hard here as on Stoneship. Jordan glanced at the map on the wall.

"Well, I suppose there's no point doing anything else today... we might as well call it a night."

He went over to the painting of the passage and touched it, closing the door and blocking out the rain and wind. The four of them sank down on the floor. Jordan went to sleep almost instantly, but the other three couldn't. After almost half an hour, Brittany fished a small battered book out of her pocket, flicked it open and began to write, but stopped almost immediately.

"What's the date today?"

Maddy looked at her watch. "The eighteenth."

"Of June?"

"Yes."

"But that means -"

A colossal rumble of thunder interrupted Brittany's thoughts, and she resolved to finish her train of thoughts in the morning, when with any luck there would be a little less background noise.

* * *

Jordan was awake before any of the others, at the thoroughly healthy time of half past four, as a matter of fact. He got up and opened the door, which for some reason didn't seem to disturb the others.

The storm had blown itself out, and the sky was a pristine deep purple, dotted with stars. He looked up at the sky, thinking about just how much it looked like the desert sky back at home. It was that position that Rachel found him in when she woke up an hour later. Together they stood there and looked up at the stars until Maddy emerged from the library half an hour later, muttering something about pillows and cupcakes.

"Brittany doesn't want to come out," said Maddy, "she seems to have something on her mind."

The three of them went back inside, and found Brittany sitting on the floor, writing in her journal. She looked up as they entered.

"What's on your mind?" Jordan asked.

Brittany didn't answer for a minute. She just sat there, looking between her journal and the three of them standing in the door. Finally, she replied. "It's my birthday."

Silence. Jordan looked at his watch. She was right – June 19, and not only that...

"Your eighteenth birthday."

Brittany nodded. It was obvious to Jordan that she had not expected to spend her eighteenth stranded on this unknown island.

"Well... happy birthday."

Brittany laughed, and the tension that had filled the air like a particularly thick pea soup since Brittany had reminded them that it was her birthday broke. All four of them started laughing their heads off, and by the time the sun finally poked up over the library they were still chuckling.

"Hey Maddy," Rachel said suddenly, "did you say you had cupcakes?"

"Nope," replied Maddy, "I had this weird dream last night. You turned into a giant cupcake."

This reminded all four of them just how hungry they were. None of them had had anything to eat since arriving on the island. They lapsed into silence for a while, until it was broken by a strange rumbling noise. Rachel, Maddy and Brittany looked arou nd wildly for the source of the noise, but Jordan simply clutched his stomach looking rather embarrassed.

To cover his embarrasment, he got to his feet and pressed on the map. The gears under the library started up again, and when he removed his hand from the map the red line had settled on the gear plateau.

Maddy made a run up to the tower to check on the plaque there now. "2:40; 2-2-1," she recited. "Anyone got any ideas there?"

Rachel did. "Well, 2:40 would have something to do with the clock tower."

* * *

They had already worked out that the small array of controls on the western tip of the island manipulated the time on the clock tower, but had not thought that that would be useful. Now, however, after setting the time to 2:40 and watching a bridge rise from the warm waters, they really began to realise how everything here had a purpose of some description.

Jordan flicked the marker switch on and pulled the door open with a loud squeak. The inside of the clock tower was very small, containing only an odd mechanism sporting three levers and three dials. All three dials were showing the number three, and had two other sides, presumably bearing the numbers two and one.

Jordan pulled the left lever. The middle and bottom numbers moved, so the mechanism now read 3-1-1. He pulled the right lever. The top and middle numbers moved this time, making it read 1-2-1. He pulled the lever in the corner. The mechanism clattered loudly and reset, reading 3-3-3 again.

Muttering to himself, Jordan pulled at the levers for ten minutes, before swearing loudly and conceding that he couldn't solve it. Rachel moved in and tried, but with very little success as well.

"Let me have a go," said Brittany, who was still standing on the bridge but had been watching Jordan and Rachel playing with the levers. Rachel moved aside, and Brittany had a go. She pulled down on the left lever, but this time held it there. The bottom and middle numbers moved once, but after that the bottom number stopped, but the middle number kept turning until she let go of the lever. She pulled the reset lever, and the puzzle reset again.

She pulled the left lever, and the numbers shifted to 3-1-1. She pulled the right lever, and they shifted to 1-2-1. She pulled the right lever again, and this time held it down. The numbers moved to 2-3-1, then 2-1-1, and finally, as they changed to read 2-2-1, she let go of the lever.

The mechanism rumbled for a minute, and a small model of a gear opened at the base of the machine.

* * *

As they had guessed, the large gear on the plateau overlooking the dock had also opened, revealing a small alcove inside. Inside was a small pedestal, and on the pedestal was something that they had become rather accustomed to seeing around – a book.

Rachel, who was closest, opened the book. Page after page of familiar but still incomprehensible script met her eyes, and on the last page was a detailed picture of a tiny island in the shadow of a huge fortress-like building. She touched the image, and blackness closed around her again, before yet another scene shimmered into being in front of her eyes.

Jordan and Maddy stepped out of the air beside her, followed shortly by Brittany, who still didn't look like she was used to the unpleasant sensation of linking yet.

They were standing on a small island. Directly in front of them was a large fortress. The island that they were on was littered with various bits of detritus – cogs, bits of metal and the like. There was another small island off to the side of the fortress. Everything else was ocean – deep, endless ocean. Where they were, they didn't know. But they did know where they weren't – they were not on Myst.


	8. Hurl

**7 – Hurl**

Jordan, Rachel, Maddy and Brittany stood on the island where they had linked in for quite a while. Even though they now had a grasp on what was going on, being able to step through the pages of a book into a totally different world was still a very strange experience. Eventually, however, the sky started to cloud over and a cold wind sprung up, and they roused themselves to go inside the fortress.

As they quickly discovered, the fortress was very simple. It consisted of two rooms that were as different as the two in Stoneship. One was decorated in red, sporting some nice paintings, a comfortable-looking throne and a number of models of various artefacts, mostly from Myst but also a telescope like the one on Stoneship. The other was decorated in blue, and sported a large number of torture instruments. In this room, however, there was also a largish device that turned out to be a projector of some kind. When Jordan switched it on (he swore that he didn't walk into it and activate it accidentally, despite the fact that that's what Maddy saw) it displayed a diagram of the fortress and the four cardinal directions – north, south, east and west. The bridge of the fortress was displayed as a small arrow protruding from it, and it was pointing south.

There were two levers on the machine. Jordan pushed the left lever. The fortress on the imager seemed to unlock itself from the south position and began to drift slightly towards the east position. When Jordan pushed the right lever, the fortress started to spin quite quickly. When Jordan released the lever, it was close to the north position. He pulled the left lever and the fortress locked again, and the machine made a plinking sound.

Brittany, ever curious, went back to the door and looked outside. Nothing had changed; the machine didn't seem to have had any effect at all.

"Maybe it's just a stimulator," suggested Maddy.

Rachel and Brittany exploded with laughter, unable to help themselves. Jordan, suppressing his own laughter, managed to reply.

"I think you might have meant 'simulator', Mop..."

Maddy turned bright red.

* * *

After examining the s(t)imulator for another few minutes, and the remainder of the fortress for another half an hour, Jordan came to the conclusion that yes, the fortress was designed to rotate, and the rotation controls used sounds similar to the tram on Selenitic to show which direction the fortress was pointing, but as for finding the actual controls, they were all still stumped, and it seemed that finding a way back to Myst hinged on working out how to rotate the fortress.

By the time three o'clock came around, all four of them had decided that they were unlikely to find all that much new, but were still examining the rotation simulator, possibly thinking that they might yet uncover something new. Nothing, however, appeared different, until Rachel happened to glance down at the floor and notice something that none of them had seen before.

"That panel on the wall has a yellow stripe on it!"

And she was right. The other three looked down at it, and the same thought entered their minds at exactly the same time – why didn't we see that before?

Rachel bent down and touched the panel, remembering how the panel in the Stoneship tunnels marked with a red square opened onto a hidden room. This one, indeed, was similar. It slid up into the wall at Rachel's touch, and she crawled inside, followed by the others.

The room was small, smaller than the one on Stoneship, and was dominated by a huge metal cage with a switch on the side. There was a large chest sitting near the entrance and there were two shelves on the wall.

As Rachel and Maddy went over to the cage, Jordan and Brittany examined the shelves. They were covered in jars containing what looked like poison. A few needles were on one of the lower shelves, and on the very bottom shelf, finally, something useful...

There was a sudden sparking noise, and the room exploded with blinding white light. It died away as suddenly as it had appeared, and Jordan and Brittany looked wildly around for the source of the light. Maddy was standing by the cage, half supporting Rachel, who had obviously been rather startled by what had happened.

"What -" began Jordan, but Maddy cut him off.

"It was this cage, Rachel pushed that switch and lightning exploded inside it."

The contents of this room and the throne room outside were beginning to form a conclusion in Jordan's mind, but he kept this to himself for the moment. "Well, we found this," he said, and held up a blue sheet of paper covered in incomprehensible writing.

"Good," said Rachel, sounding slightly ill, "now let's get out of here."

They moved back to the entrance, but something made Rachel, who was in front, stop and look down at the chest near the door. A growing feeling of anticipation creeping up her spine, she stooped down and opened the chest.

A horrible stench filled the room, making everyone's eyes water. Rachel looked down at the contents of the chest, and immediately wished she hadn't. She got to her feet and scrambled out the entrance as quickly as she could.

Jordan, Maddy and Brittany, coughing from the stench and holding back the measly contents of their stomachs, looked into the chest as well. Jordan immediately closed it, and they scrambled out into the throne room as well, collapsing onto the floor. Jordan, holding his nose, crawled back over to the panel in the wall and closed it to block out the stench.

"That was..."

* * *

They found Rachel on the south island. Judging from the stains on the rock closest to the ocean, she had not been able to hold back the contents of her stomach. She looked up as they approached.

"That was horrible," she said weakly, voicing Jordan's thoughts from the throne room. "Why would anyone put -"

"That was some sort of torture chamber, there's no doubt about it," cut in Jordan. "Torture instruments, an electric chair in cage form, phials of poison and a cut-up dead body in a chest – what else could it be?"

Nobody answered – they didn't want to think about it.

* * *

Giving that throne room a wide berth, Jordan and Brittany continued searching the fortress, while Maddy stayed with Rachel on the south island. They knew what they were looking for – another panel in the wall, but in the other throne room this time. They reasoned that if there was a blue page in the last room, then perhaps there would be a red page in this one. And, of course, it couldn't possibly have been any worse than the last one.

As a matter of fact, not only was it much more pleasant than the last room, there was an added bonus inside. The room contained numerous chests, all of them lying open on the floor and overflowing with gold and silver coins, and a large bottle rack against the wall. And every single space in the rack was filled with a large bottle of champagne.

Briefly distracted by the champagne, Jordan glanced down into one of the chests, and saw, sitting on top of the piles of gold and silver, a single sheet of red paper, which he recognised as what he had come in here for in the first place. He put it in his pocket, and turned back to the bottle rack, where Brittany was examining some of the bottles. She took one off the rack, and a small, rolled-up piece of paper fell from the empty space, landing at Jordan's feet. He picked it up, unravelled it and read.

"'Sirrus,'" he read, "'Your greed sickens me! Your desire for wealth and plunder is never satisfied. I will instruct my subjects not to pay your new tax and you know they'll listen to me. Sincerely, Achenar.'"

* * *

Five minutes later, Jordan and Brittany were back on the south island with Maddy and Rachel, carrying an armful of the champagne bottles and a few glasses. Maddy's eyes lit up.

* * *

Maddy tore her eyes open and immediately closed them again. It was pouring with rain. She turned her head (with great difficulty) and looked at her watch. It was eight o'clock in the morning, and from the looks of it it had been raining for a while, as she and the others were soaked through. Strange, she thought. Her memories stopped at the sixth glass of champagne.

The remnants of Brittany's party lay over near the bridge leading into the fortress. There were four glasses, four empty bottles and a half-full bottle. Struggling to her feet, a pounding headache ringing in her ears, she walked over to the bridge. Or she thought she did, anyway – for some reason she ended up back where she started.

* * *

Eventually all four of them recovered from their little booze-up and got back inside the fortress to dry themselves off. By this time it was past midday and they still hadn't found their way back to Myst.

They wandered the fortress a little more. They were walking through the small dark corridor that connected the two throne rooms when Brittany suddenly noticed something.

"There's a large red button on the wall over here, next to this side passage."

And so there was. Jordan reached over and pressed it. Gears rumbled suddenly and the side passage lowered into a staircase leading down to a small room. The four of them walked tenatively down the stairs into a small room containing a large, odd-looking machine bearing a single lever and a small screen showing two circles. The smaller circle was inside the larger circle and both had a small gap in it. When Jordan pushed the lever, the machine sprang to life and the outer circle began to rotate quickly. When the gaps in the circles lined up, the circles turned red.

Jordan went back up the stairs. He had only been up there for a minute when he called back down the stairs. "Hey, you know that pillar down that passage? Well, it's changed."

The other three came back up the stairs and saw that he was right. The pillar, which five minutes ago had been reflecting the wall of the corridor, had taken on a wooden texture.

Jordan pressed the red button again and the floor raised again. Ever cautious, he reached out and touched the edge or the pillar – or where the edge of the pillar was last night. Now, however, there was nothing there – the pillar was hollow.

Jordan stepped inside, followed by the others. It wasn't exactly spacious, but there was room enough for them all. On the wall near the door there was a row of buttons – an up-pointing arrow, a down-pointing arrow, and a rectangular button in between them.

Rachel, who was nearest, pressed the up arrow. With a hiss of air, a door slid closed over the opening and the pillar hurtled upwards. Before any of them knew what had happened, however, it had stopped and the door opened again. They all tumbled out of what they now knew was the elevator into a small round room that contained nothing but the elevator back down to the bottom.

"Well that was a waste of time if I've ever heard of one," muttered Jordan, and the others couldn't help but agree.

They all bundled back into the elevator to go back down, but before they did, Rachel noticed something.

"What do you think this middle button does?" Not waiting for a response, she pressed it. A series of beeps sounded, and after the sixth beep the door slid closed again and the elevator dropped, but this time it didn't go right down to the bottom, instead stopping about halfway. The door hissed open and revealed only solid rock. Rachel kicked it, but succeeded in only giving herself a sore foot. She pressed the up arrow and the elevator returned to the upper level.

"Surely," she muttered darkly, "there's a reason for that."

"Well," chimed in Brittany, "there was a delay between you pressing the button and the elevator going down... maybe you're not supposed to stay in the elevator."

It sounded very strange, but it was the only lead they had. Rachel stuck her head back inside the elevator and pressed the middle button. The beeps sounded and she withdrew her head. After a few more seconds the door closed with a hiss and the elevator descended out of sight. As it stopped, the top of the pillar became level with the floor, and on top of the pillar was something that would be very helpful.

Jordan stepped up to the controls and pushed the left lever. There was no little diagram of the fortress this time, but a dull clunk deep in the guts of the fortress told him that this was indeed what they had been looking for. He pushed the right lever forward.

The gears behind the elevator sprung to life, and the floor of the room began to shudder and jolt. When he released the lever, it all stopped. He pulled the left lever, and a hiss of air sounded through the room – west. They wanted east.

After a few more attempts, Jordan got the hang of the controls and rotated once more. A sound like a tuning fork played – east.

"That's all well and good, Jordan," said Rachel, "but how do we get back down?"

There was a small button below the levers that had not been there on the simulator downstairs. Jordan pressed it. The pillar shuddered, and he jumped back as it moved up again and the elevator returned to greet them.

* * *

It would seem that they had finally struck gold. When they stepped out of the fortress they crossed the bridge to the east island. From here they could see the south island, where they had linked in, but they could also see a third island to the north.

Climbing around the strange rock formations on this tiny island, Jordan finally made it to a small pedestal with two symbols on it. He called Rachel up, and she couldn't make head or tail of the symbols either. Maddy, on the other hand, could.

"There's a pedestal on the south island that has four spaces to set different symbols on it. This looks like it could be the last two."

Jordan made a note of what the symbols looked like and they all headed back inside the fortress, reasoning that the other two symbols would be on the north island. Indeed, they were, and they decided that they had enough information to get them back to Myst. On their way back to the elevator, however, they were passing through the neat throne room (having avoided the torture chamber since discovering the contents of the chest in the hidden room) and Rachel noticed something out the window which hadn't been there before. Pausing, her curiosity getting the better of her, she bent down and looked through the telescope. What she saw wasn't particularly pleasant, either.

She saw a ruined ship, and tied to the mast was a skeleton, clothed in only a few tattered rags, swaying back and forth in the breeze. Tearing her gaze away from the skeleton, she ran out down the corridor to join the others in the elevator.

* * *

Within five minutes, they were all standing back on the south island in front of the pedestal that Maddy had spotted earlier. There were four symbols on it with a button below each one, and a large red button below the other buttons. Jordan pressed the button under the first symbol and it changed. He pressed it again. It changed again, and this symbol he recognised as the one that matched the first symbol on the northern pedestal. He moved on to the second symbol, then the third, and the fourth. He pressed the red button.

Nothing happened.

Maddy sighed, exasperated. Rachel moved over to Jordan and looked down at the symbols, then laughed.

"Your memory is getting worse, Jordan, you've mixed the middle two symbols up!"

She righted the symbols and pressed the red button again. A rumble of gears sounded and a small strip of metal which had served no apparent purpose lowered into the ground, revealing an underground room.

Maddy walked down the newly-revealed stairs into the room. It was completely empty except for a small pedestal in the middle of the room. Sitting on the pedestal was what they had been looking for since yesterday morning.

Opening the book to the last page, Maddy touched the welcoming image on the paper, and stepped forward into the darkness.

The air of Myst had never smelt cleaner than after their experience on Mechanical. But as Jordan pressed the pages back into the two books, he knew that they were almost finished. One more page each, he thought, and then maybe we'll finally be able to get out of here.

One more page.


	9. Fire

**8 – Fire**

Even after the others were long asleep, Rachel lay awake and looked up at the black sky. It was very similar to the desert sky, except the moon was bigger. Just how much like home it was made her cry.

If she had been at home now, she and Jordan would probably have spent the evening watching what little television they got reception for deep in the desert, then gone off to sleep or stayed up for a while having – well, you know what I mean. Myst, despite its tranquil beauty, would never be a substitute for that.

The stars almost seemed to taunt her as they smiled down at her. _It'll be harder than you think_, they said. _If only you'd never found that book..._

Rachel glared at them for a minute, rolled over and went to sleep.

* * *

Rachel awoke with a start to find Jordan shaking her.

"What? I'm awake!" she spluttered.

"Come on, Rach, we're waiting for you!"

She got groggily to her feet and followed Jordan off towards the cabin, where Maddy and Brittany were waiting. Quite different to the silence she had heard last time she was in here, the small room was now filled with a soft crackling, rumbling noise, which Rachel soon realised was coming from the furnace.

"How did you -"

"Well, it was really rather simple in the end," said Maddy. "We reasoned that the last page must have had something to do with the tree..."

"The last red line on the map," chimed in Jordan. "When we went up to the tower to check the plaque, it said '7,2,4', and the only place we could think of to use that was here."

He gestured to the safe, which was now sitting open. Rachel could see that the numbers on the door had been set to 7-2-4. Inside the safe was a box of matches.

"So we lit the furnace," continued Brittany, "because it was cold. When we turned it up, though, something outside made a hell of a noise, and we think that that might have something to do with the last pages."

"When we went outside," Maddy explained, "we found that the tree was getting taller and taller. There was some sort of elevator in it, but we missed it. When we brought it back down and sent it up again, we got a nice view of the clock tower, but not a lot else."

"In other words," finished Jordan heavily, "we're stuck. We can't work it out."

Rachel pondered this for a minute. "So you say that when you turn the furnace up, the tree rises, and when you turn it off it drops back down again?"

The others nodded.

"Did you try riding it down instead of up?"

* * *

_{Brittany's journal, 25-6}_

_Once again Rachel has displayed her regularly astounding powers of reasoning. I don't know what we would do here without her. Surely we would work things out in the end, but we would be here for a long, long time._

_I don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I never expected to spend my eighteenth birthday quite like I did on Tuesday. At least, I think it was Tuesday... I've rather lost track of what day of the week it is since being here. It was fun, though. At least we found something to drink._

_Jordan and I had decided before working on the cabin that we wouldn't link through anywhere today. We know that there is indeed a book under the tree, and it appears to connect to the last of the worlds described on the library bookshelf – Channelwood, as it is referred to as. A world completely swamped by water except for a small island, with huge trees growing from the water. However, he says that we deserve a day off. I personally think it's because he still has a hangover – he drank a lot more than any of us did._

* * *

_{Maddy's journal, 06/25}_

_I'm still trying to reason out how we managed to survive in Selenitic when we didn't have Rachel around to help us. I mean, it's not like she deliberately got hit by that rock, but Jordan and I still somehow managed to fight our way out of there through those tunnels. And then Brittany showed up. That was unfortunate. Wait, did I actually just write that? Dammit, I hope she doesn't read this..._

_Hopefully all of us can come out of this next world – Channelwood, or whatever it's called – unscathed. That would be a feat. Then maybe we'd be able to get off this island. If only I'd never wondered what had become of Jordan and Rachel when they didn't show up in town for three days straight._

* * *

_{Jordan's journal, 25-Jun}_

_Heaven forbid, but I'm starting to enjoy this. I'm still not used to these books, though. Look, it's all very interesting, but despite the routine of it all, these freaking books are something I don't know if I'll ever get used to._

_I think this was the most enjoyable, despite my disorientation, before Mop showed up. Back then, it was just me and Rach. But that only lasted three days, and then Mop showed up, and then Brittany. I don't know what we'll do if Jack wonders where Mop's gone and comes looking for her as well._

_One way or another, we deserve a rest. Plus, I still have a bit of a hangover. I nearly walked into the wall on the way out of the cabin earlier. Nobody noticed, luckily, except I think Brittany might have seen it out of the corner of her eye._

_I don't know where we'd be if Rach wasn't here, though. I mean, look at what happened this morning. We'd all been awake for three hours working on that, and Rach staggers in, having just woken up, and works it out for us. She's got brains, that girl. I consider myself lucky to have her._

* * *

_{Rachel's journal, 25th June}_

_Get me out of here!_

_I mean yes optimism, yes hope, but there comes a time when I must simply look at all the bad aspects of this unintentional trip and think to myself, "Why me?" There's no food, for a start. I'm starving! Fresh water is scarce – the only fresh water here is in the stone basin, and that has a timber aftertaste. Stoneship taunted me – water everywhere, and not a drop was fresh, except the rain. Mechanical was the same. Selenitic is the only source of decent water that I've seen – the water in that stream is fresh – a little earthy, but still very nice. The champagne from Mechanical isn't really something that you drink on a regular basis, although I'm sure that Maddy would be happy to give that a go._

_And then there's my clothes. If they were a bit worn to start with, it's nothing compared to them now. They've been soaked in water a lot, scratched by rocks, torn on trees, burnt by meteors, stained with blood, dirt, sweat and tears, and we've barely been here a week. I haven't showered since we left, and the numerous dips in oceans barely count there. Neither has Jordan, mind you..._

* * *

Dawn broke over Myst, and the four companions rose feeling rested – not exactly refreshed, but rested. None of them spoke as they made their way down to the cabin, but as they walked inside, Rachel swore loudly for no discernible reason.

"What?"

"I'm starving, that's what!" Rachel wasn't one to be deprived of her food... even lemons, which she loathed, would be welcome right now.

"So am I, Rach. We all are." Jordan had an excellent point.

"Yeah, well, you lot didn't lose what little you had in your stomachs when we were on Mechanical, did you?" Rachel had an excellent point as well.

"Calm down, Rachel." Brittany was very skilled in calming down potentially violent situations such as this one. "We are all hungry. I've only been here a few days and I'm starved. But if we can find these last pages then maybe we'll be able to get something to eat."

Rachel's shoulders sagged. She mumbled an apology under her breath, and they all headed off in the direction of the tree.

* * *

Jordan was sure he was not going to get used to book travel in a hurry, and indeed, this link was no more pleasant than the others that he had experienced. It was a relief to step out of the spinning blackness next to Rachel and Maddy onto a small wooden pathway. Everywhere he looked, colossal trees stretched up out of the water, as if seeing just how tall they could be. Actual land, indeed, was in the minority – a tiny rocky island jutted out of the water a short ways away, completely dominated by a large windmill turning lazily in the breeze. But what made this world even stranger than the others, Jordan thought as Brittany linked in next to him, was that whilst the others were quiet, with only a select few sounds to hear, this world constantly buzzed with sound. The water lapped softly at the wooden pathways, frogs croaked, insects buzzed around, birds chirped – the mix of noises was very strange, and very much different.

Very much different.


	10. Branch

**9 – Branch**

It was draughty in the old windmill. From the outside it looked like a fairly large building, but inside it was fairly small, and dominated by a huge tank, full to the brim of cold ocean water. Jordan, Rachel and Brittany were huddled next to the tank, trying to keep warm, but the icy wind that constantly chilled this world whistled in through the two doors and the gaps between the timber. Maddy had volunteered to go outside and brave the wind to try and find something that would help them, and it was about then that she stumbled back inside.

"It's no good," she gasped, "nothing's powered. There's all these pipes all over the place but they're all empty. I think everything here might be powered by water, but there's no water getting to them."

She sat down next to Brittany, but jumped up again upon discovering she had sat on a small tap protruding from a small pipe on the floor. The pipe, which was a similar colour to the floor and really not exactly noticeable, ran from an outlet on the bottom of the tank and out the door, connecting with a length of the pipe that ran around the pathways.

Maddy turned the pipe. A soft trickling noise echoed through the windmill.

"The greatest discoveries were made by accident," said Maddy with a grin, and went back outside.

* * *

Jordan, Rachel, Maddy and Brittany were standing at one of the many junctions of the pathways over the water. Behind them, the path twisted off towards the windmill; to their right, the path ended at a gate a short way away; to the left were more paths.

"This is like a maze!" Rachel exclaimed, scanning the paths that she could see, which led off all over the place.

"It's really not as bad as it looks," replied Maddy. "Anyway, there are these valves all over the place. I think the water can only be used to power one thing at a time, and you have to use these valves to direct it to where you want to use it."

"So where are we going?"

Maddy pointed at a small wooden box with a number of cables connected to it which was not that far away. "I think that might be an elevator, and if it is it will take us up there," she said, and pointed up.

Jordan, Rachel and Brittany all looked up. There was a network of small huts and bridges in the trees which none of them had seen earlier.

Maddy turned the valve and the flow of water changed to direct it towards the other paths. She continued to do this until they reached the small elevator. A small motor sat next to it, and it was currently making a rather loud humming noise.

"Um, Maddy? Have you thought about how we are going to get all four of us up there?" asked Rachel. "That elevator is smaller than the one on Myst that goes up to the tower. And it's made of wood!"

It was quite clear that Maddy hadn't thought about that at all. Jordan, on the other hand, had been thinking about that.

"Could we fit two in there?"

He got in, and Maddy got in as well. It was not comfortable, but they did fit. Jordan closed the door and managed to pull on something inside the elevator. A second later, it began to move slowly upward. After getting used to the blistering speed of the elevator on Mechanical, this was agonisingly slow, but it made it to the top in the end. A minute later, it came back down, this time with only Jordan in it. When it got to the bottom, Brittany got in, and after she went up Rachel went up as well.

The four of them were facing a small, open hut. The wind up here, contrary to their expectations, was not as strong as down the bottom. It was still quite strong, however, and cold. It was a long way back down to the water. A narrow rope bridge spanned the gap between the elevator and the hut.

Rachel was brave enough to lead the way over to the hut, and the others followed her. After a bit of wandering around the huts, they found themselves in front of a large locked gate and another elevator, which presumably went up to the next level of huts which they had noticed. However, as neither of these provided any way to move on, they had to turn around.

"Surely there's a way to open this gate? It probably links back down to that gate at the bottom," said Brittany. "We should have a bit more of a look around."

* * *

There was an incredibly narrow path leading off one of the huts which they had overlooked before. It was essentially just a plank, though – there was nothing to hold on to. Rachel again led the way across, slowly this time. She made it over, as indeed did Jordan and Brittany.

Exactly what happened after that is anyone's guess. Maybe Maddy misstepped, maybe she tripped over her own feet, maybe she slipped. Whatever exactly happened, though, the result was very definite, and that was that Maddy's feet left the plank, her wild grab for something to hold on to missed the lot, and gravity took over.

* * *

The tiny elevator clattered into place at the bottom. The door sprang open and Rachel and Jordan practically fell out in their haste to get to where Maddy had fallen to. She was lying completely motionless on one of the wooden pathways, not far from where they had linked in.

Rachel reached her first. Maddy was bleeding slightly from the back of the head and her left arm was bent at a strange angle. She was unconscious, but alive.

Jordan appeared at Rachel's shoulder. He took one look at Maddy and grimaced slightly.

"I'm no great shakes at first aid," Rachel said, sounding rather exasperated, "I need Brittany for this sort of thing."

"Did someone call?"

Brittany had also appeared behind Jordan. She bent down and examined Maddy, looking at her arm in particular.

"Well that's not pleasant," she said brightly after a minute. "It's probably good that she's out cold, she'd be in excruciating pain if she was awake."

They moved Maddy into the windmill. On their way past the large wooden gate, Rachel noticed that it was standing open. There was what appeared to be a very long, twisting staircase behind it, which led up around the tree that it was mounted on, ending at the gate on the next level up.

* * *

A few tweaks on the pipe valves redirected the flow of the water to the bottom of the staircase. It was Rachel's best guess that this would power the elevator next to the upstairs gate. Rachel's guesses, as a rule, generally turned out to be right, and this time was no exception. The three of them crowded into the tiny elevator and in thirty seconds were on the top level.

The top level was very bare. There were only three huts, but they were much better built and more sturdy, connected by well-built paths.

Jordan, Rachel and Brittany went towards the hut on the left. The door was patterned intricately, made of darkly stained wood with a plain metal handle on one side. Jordan turned it. It was unlocked, and he pushed the door open.

Inside was a beautifully designed bedroom, not unlike the one on Stoneship. A neatly-made bed stood in one corner of the room, two small desks under the two windows, and a small chest of drawers near the door.

Brittany ran inside and examined the chest of drawers. After searching all the drawers, she turned and ran out of the room without a word. Looking at each other curiously, Rachel and Jordan closed the door and started to search the room.

* * *

Brittany stumbled back into the room a few minutes later, supporting the still unconscious form of Maddy. She laid Maddy down on the bed, straightened her arm and then turned to the chest of drawers that she had looked at earlier. She pulled one of the drawers open and whipped out a roll of material. With a few deft tears in the material she fashioned a sling and propped Maddy's broken arm into it. With the rest of the material she made a crude bandage and wrapped Maddy's head in it. Rachel was impressed.

"You've gotta show me how to do that..." she murmured.

"Well, maybe later," said Brittany. "Now, what have you two found up here?"

"I found a plate of mouldy cheese," said Jordan. "Anyone still peckish?" He held up the plate which did indeed contain some disgusting looking cheese. Rachel and Brittany backed off.

"I also found this, which might be a bit more useful." He produced a single sheet of red paper, covered in that same strange writing.

"I found this," said Rachel, and produced half of a torn piece of paper. "I thought it might be useful."

Jordan took the paper from her. "Oh, I know what this is! It's the other half of that note that I found in Stoneship." He searched his pockets for it quickly. "Oh, I must have left it back on Myst. Never mind."

Rachel pocketed the paper and they all left the room, leaving Maddy on the bed, still out cold.

* * *

The next hut looked rather similar to the last one, except that it was far less patterned on the outside. Jordan pushed the door open. It was a smallish room, dominated by some sort of altar. The three of them stepped inside and closed the door. No sooner had they done so, however, when something began to appear above the altar. Swirling blue static only appeared there for a minute, then it cleared and a face appeared. It was younger, with less beard, but they all recognised it as Achenar opened his mouth and began to speak in a horribly strange language.

When the strange recital was over, Brittany had turned very pale. Rachel was shaking, and Jordan, who was also very pale, was busily calming her down.

A swift – very swift – search of the room revealed it as some sort of sacrificial temple. The altar had a faint smell about it, similar to the chest in Mechanical that they all regretted ever opening. There was no blue page, or indeed anything useful in the slightest.

They moved on to the third hut. This one didn't look quite as sophisticated as the others – indeed, it looked as though the horrors of the Mechanical torture chamber could be contained inside it. However, when Jordan pushed the door open, they were pleasantly surprised – the room was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike that horrible experience. It was completely empty except for a bed with no sheets (or indeed a mattress) and a small machine sitting in the corner. At the base of the machine was a blue sheet of paper.

Jordan picked up the page and stashed it in his pocket, but he couldn't resist having a play with the machine. It sported four buttons under a small screen. He pressed the first button. Immediately, the screen displayed the same hologram they had seen in the temple – this machine was obviously the controller for the hologram.

The second button, and the third, yielded only more chants. When Jordan pushed the fourth, however, he had some luck. Rather than another of Achenar's chants, the screen this time displayed Sirrus, his brother, who appeared to have a message for Achenar.

"_I hope I pushed the right button, dear brother... What a very interesting device you have here. I'm not erasing anything important, am I? Heh heh heh."_ Sirrus' demeanour changed in an instant. _"He is preparing. Remember, take only one page."_

The screen died to black. Jordan stepped away from it, thinking, but his thoughts were disrupted when the door opened and Maddy walked in, not looking like she was in the best of health, but smiling nonetheless.

"Hey look, Mop's awake!"

"Jordan," replied Maddy brightly, "I still have one good arm. I will not hesitate to hit you with it very hard if you do not shut up."

* * *

The four of them left the room and headed back towards the elevator, deep in conversation about what had happened to Maddy. Sirrus' message to Achenar had completely left everyone's mind until Brittany accidentally triggered the hologram in the temple on their way past.

"_I hope I pushed the right button, dear brother..."_

The message immediately moved back into Jordan's mind. "That's gotta mean something, but I can't fathom what..."

"Oh, don't worry about it," said Rachel, "if it does matter we'll find out soon enough."

* * *

Back on the bottom level, Maddy pointed over at another elevator, quite a ways off. "I suspect that that might be our way out. Unfortunately, there are gaps in the pathways leading over there."

They had wandered over to a gap in the pathway. A small lever stood next to it, and beyond the gap the pathway met another junction and continued off towards the elevator.

Rachel took one look at the lever sitting next to the gap and disappeared off again. After a minute or so, a tricking noise quietly met their ear, and then a humming did the same except not so quietly.

Rachel reappeared and pulled the lever. Despite most likely not being used for a long while, it moved easily. The pathway shuddered underneath them and a number of planks exploded up out of the water, bridging the gap over the water.

The four of the crossed and headed for the elevator. It was not, however, powered – the water was still powering the bridge.

Maddy had wandered off along the other path at the junction, just to see what was down there, she said, following the pipes. Now, however, she called out to the others.

"There's some sort of crank over here! It extends the pipe so that you can get water across the gap!"

* * *

Rachel bent over the last valve. Turning it carefully, she listened for the sound that she wanted to hear – the trickle of water that would power the elevator that would hopefully get them out. As it obediently pierced the air, another, more distant sound did also – a very faint humming of a motor. She looked up at the others, who were waiting over by the elevator. Jordan gave her the thumbs-up – everything was finally working.

She crossed the bridge – which was still standing – back over to the elevator. "All right then," she said, "shall we go up?"

* * *

Brittany and Jordan stumbled out of the elevator into the small room at the top. Maddy was waiting for them near the elevator, and Rachel was crouched in the middle of the room, examining something on the floor. Before Jordan could ask what she was looking at, however, a soft ringing echoed through the room and she vanished, leaving the small book sitting open on the floor.

As Jordan squeezed himself out of nothing in particular to stand next to Rachel in the Myst library, he was already feeling in his pockets for the red and blue pages that they had collected from Channelwood. The sky outside was perfectly black, as it was the middle of the night, but there was no time to stop now. He had the final two pages, and already he could almost smell the hot desert air of being back home.

But there was still much to do...


	11. Finale

**Strangers in Paradise**

**10 – Finale**

Jordan was pacing in circles around the library. Brittany and Maddy were sitting near the bookshelf, examining Maddy's still healing left arm. All three of them were waiting. Rachel had gone to Stoneship. She said she needed to sleep. Whether or not she had, they did not know. The laments of Sirrus and Achenar had become very disturbing, and nobody was particularly sure what to do from here. Neither Sirrus nor Achenar seemed like they could be trusted, but one of them had to be innocent. They only had one guess, however, and they really couldn't think straight at the moment. There was something lurking at the back of Jordan's mind, though, something that would sort all this out. Something that he had heard not all that long ago...

The air rang and shimmered as Rachel linked into the library. Jordan stopped pacing immediately and Brittany and Maddy leapt to their feet.

"I can't stand this!" Rachel exclaimed. "We need to sort this out, and we need to do it right now."

"Well we can't just take our chances on which one to release," said Jordan. "We have to know for sure, because we've only got one chance. I don't know, though, neither of them seems like they're innocent..." He trailed off, and something seemed to light up behind his eyes.

"God, I've been stupid," he muttered in not more than a whisper. "We heard – but it's so obvious..."

The others were looking at him, still not enlightened about his sudden discovery. He explained, still in an undertone as if the brothers imprisoned in the two books could hear them.

"That message we saw on Channelwood. Do you remember what it said?"

Rachel did. "_'He is preparing. Remember, take only one page.'_ But what does that have to do with..."

She trailed off as well. Something had obviously struck her as well. "Do you mean to say that... they're collaborating?"

"That's exactly what I mean," replied Jordan.

"But then... what do we do?"

Jordan contemplated this for a further minute, and then the answer to that struck him as well. "There were two things that both of the brothers said. The first was that pattern 158 from the code book entered into the fireplace door would take us to the last pages. The other thing was -"

"Don't touch the green book!" exclaimed Rachel, the answer hitting her as well.

* * *

Jordan tapped the small red button on the side of the fireplace. The small space gave a sudden shudder, then, without warning, began to rotate, throwing all four people inside onto the floor. By the time they had got to their feet, the rotation had stopped. The door slid smoothly open to reveal a small alcove with two shelves inside. The shelf on top contained a large book bound in a dull green material, the bottom shelf contained two sheets of paper – one red and one blue.

Rachel looked at the others. When none of them made any objection, she stepped forward, picked up the green book and opened it to the last page.

The image on the right page showed a man sitting at a makeshift desk. The man wore small round glasses, had light brown hair and a beard that covered his chin. He was writing furiously in a large book. He paused, obviously distracted by something, and looked around, then up, right at Rachel.

"Who the devil are you?" he said. Seeing Rachel raise her hand, he continued. "No! Don't come here to D'ni. Not yet!"

Rachel lowered her hand. "Dunny?" she muttered to Jordan. "Where's -"

"No, not Dunny," interrupted the man in the book, "D'ni. Emphasis on the N, not the apostrophe. If you accent it wrong it means 'toilet'.

"I have many questions for you," he continued, "as you, no doubt, have for me. Where shall I begin?"

"You could start," said Rachel, "by introducing yourself."

"Yes... perhaps my story is in order," the man agreed. "My name is Atrus. I fear you must have met my sons, Sirrus and Achenar, in those books, the red and blue books, on Myst, in my library."

"Your library?" It seemed to Rachel as though everything was suddenly being pieced together. They had found the mysterious Atrus, and perhaps, with his help, they could finally sort everything out.

"Yes... my library. It contains my works, my writings. Oh, I wrote many books, many books that could link me to fantastic places. You must surely have seen a few of them. It's an art I learnt from my father, many years ago.

"Oh, but the red and blue books, well, those were different. I wrote those books to entrap greedy explorers that might stumble upon my island. But I had no idea that my sons would be trapped.

"My sons... we had many journeys together. I gave them free reign to the books. Perhaps... that was not wise. I could see the greed growing in them. I had not told them about the red and blue books. Oh, their imaginations went wild, they dreamed of riches and power... of course, they did not know the books were traps.

"They begged me for access to those books. I, of course, denied them. Ah, they devised a plan... an evil plan. I had no idea to what extent their greed had progressed! Their own mother, my own dear Catherine, they used her to lure me here to D'ni.

"Of course, I could return to Myst, except that they removed a single page from my Myst linking book. I cannot return without that page. You, my friends, can bring that page to me. Oh, I pray you believe my story about the lies my sons have told you! If you can find it in yourselves to find that page and bring it to me here in D'ni, then I could go to Myst and bring justice to my sons for what they've done."

"But where -" Rachel tried to ask, but Atrus interrupted her.

"I don't know where. I must return to my writing... please hurry. Bring the page... bring the page with you."

He picked his pen up and began to write. Rachel closed the book and placed it back on the shelf. She turned and faced the others.

"So, do we trust him?"

"Yes," replied Maddy and Brittany immediately.

"I'd trust him a lot more than Sirrus and Achenar," replied Jordan.

* * *

Back in the library, Rachel pulled the torn half of the note she'd found in Channelwood out of her pocket. "Where's your half of this, Jordan?" she asked. "It might help us."

Jordan searched his pockets again. "I don't know what I did with it..."

Maddy pulled a torn piece of paper out of her pocket. "Is this it? You dropped it on Selenitic, I thought you might want it."

Rachel pieced the two pieces of paper together and read it quickly. "It says something about a vault on this island. To get at it, we have to turn on all the marker switches, then turn the one on the dock off."

* * *

A sharp rumble of thunder crossed the sky as four pairs of feet clattered onto the dock. Rachel looked nervously up at the sky. They'd seen a lot of rain since they'd been here, but this looked like it would be quite the storm. Not wanting to get caught out in it, she pulled on the switch that sat next to the stairs.

There was a subtle click, and a panel in the base of the switch swung silently open. Behind it was a small space, and in that space was a single sheet of white paper covered with incomprehensible writing.

Rachel grabbed the page and pushed the switch back up. The panel closed as silently as it opened, but they didn't see it do so – they were on their way to the library already.

* * *

Back behind the fireplace again, Rachel, still clutching the page in one hand, opened the green book. Atrus was still sitting there on the other side of the panel, writing in his book. As Rachel looked down at the panel, he looked up at her. "Have you found the missing page?" Without waiting for an answer, he beckoned her to come through and went back to writing.

Still nervous, Rachel looked around at the others.

"We're right behind you," said Jordan, and squeezed her hand.

Rachel turned back to the book, touched the page and was swallowed by spinning darkness once again.

* * *

They were standing in a huge room, more a cavern. It was deathly silent except for one sound – the constant scratching of a pen.

Atrus was sitting at his desk across the room from where they had linked in. With Rachel leading the way, they crossed the room quietly and stood in front of his desk. Not until they were there did Atrus look up and put his pen down.

"Ah, my friends... you have come. We meet face to face."

Rachel nodded silently.

"And the page," Atrus continued, "did you bring the page?"

Rachel held up the page. A relieved smile crossed Atrus' face. He held out his hand and Rachel gave him the page.

"You've done the right thing." He picked up a smaller book from the side of his desk, a very familiar book with the word Myst written on the cover. Flipping it open, he found a place where a page had been torn from the binding. Placing the page that Rachel had given him next to the binding, it resealed itself immediately with a vague hum. He turned now to the last page, where a familiar picture glowed.

"I shall return shortly." He placed his hand on the book, shimmered and vanished. The room was completely silent.

The silence was punctured suddenly by a sudden rumbling growl. Rachel, Jordan and Brittany looked wildly around for the source of the noise. Maddy, however, simply clutched at her stomach and looked very embarrassed. Upon realising what had made the noise, Rachel Jordan and Brittany dissolved into wild laughter, and Maddy joined them. Their laughter completely drowned out the noise of Atrus linking back in, and when they stopped laughing, they were all incredibly embarrassed to find him standing behind them, a very amused look on his face.

"Sorry," gasped Rachel, "just Maddy's stomach."

Atrus nodded, still smiling, and sat back down.

"Well, I have many questions for you, my friends, but my writing cannot wait...

"Now, reward... I'm sorry, but all that I have to offer you is the library, on the island of Myst, the books that are contained there... feel free to explore at your leisure. I hope your explorations are satisfying. You will no longer have my sons to deal with."

Rachel looked at the others, slightly confused, but Atrus didn't seem to notice.

"Oh, and one more thing... I am fighting a foe much greater than my sons could even imagine. At some point in the future, I may find it necessary to request your assistance. Until that point, please feel free to enjoy the explorations from my library on Myst... and thank you again."

Rachel picked up the Myst linking book from Atrus' desk and flicked it open. Just as she was about to link out, though, Atrus called out again.

"Hold on..."

He pulled a large bowl out from under his desk. It was full of fruit of all different sorts – apples, oranges, peaches, plums, bananas, even a pineapple. He handed the bowl to Rachel. "Take this. I'll bring you something even more useful tomorrow."

Rachel took the bowl, smiled at Atrus, and linked out.

* * *

Outside the library, Rachel's prediction had come very true – the rain was pouring down relentlessly. Flashes of lightning lit the forest every now and again, followed quickly by colossal thunderclaps.

The four of them sat down on the library floor and ate ravenously from Atrus' fruit bowl. Within ten minutes all that was left was the pineapple, and only because they didn't have a knife to cut it with. And as she ate, Rachel was thinking furiously.

They had finished. Atrus had destroyed the red and blue books leaving huge burns on the shelves. But they were still here, and here was not where whey wanted to be.

Or was it?

Perhaps it would have to be where they wanted to be. It seemed that they had no choice. Atrus had not mentioned a way out. And perhaps, Rachel though as she surveyed the beautifully panelled room, that wasn't such a bad thing after all...


	12. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Rachel was relaxing in the glimmering sun of Antares. Jordan was off picking fruit in the forest, and Brittany and Maddy were still on Myst. It had been four days since they had freed Atrus from his imprisonment in the D'ni cavern.

Living on Myst was a lot more pleasant now that Atrus had spent a bit of time fixing the place up for them and getting them everything they needed. No, he couldn't get them home, he said, but he could make Myst as comfortable as he could for them...

* * *

_Three days previously..._

Rachel, Jordan, Brittany and Maddy had been out on Selenitic, as Rachel had decided that she'd like to see the rest of it, after being knocked out cold when they were there previously. They had linked back into the library, and the first thing that they all noticed was that all the burnt books had been removed from the shelf, something which they had most definitely not done. The journals and the code book were together on the bottom shelf, and on the top shelf someone had placed another book, sitting open, and a piece of paper next to it.

Rachel picked up the piece of paper and read it, with the others looking at it over her shoulder.

_Dear friends_, it said, _As I see you have been doing as I suggested and exploring at your leisure, I took the liberty of cleaning up the shelf, taking all the burnt books and leaving this one here. It links to Antares, a harvest world I wrote whilst I was imprisoned to provide me with food and water. I thought that this may make your time here a little more comfortable. Also, if you go down to the cabin you will most likely find something else that will make things more comfortable for you. Best regards, Atrus._

The four of them linked through the book on the shelf and found themselves in a small stone courtyard. A narrow stone path led winding off into a large orchard. It crossed a second path a short way in that extended off to the left and right into the orchard, and the first path ended at a stone well. Behind them in the courtyard were a few small wooden benches, and directly across from the stone path there were two small pedestals, each bearing a small book – one linking to D'ni and one linking to Myst. It was idyllic, with the sky a crystal clear blue and the temperature perfect, without even the slightest breeze. All the trees in the orchard were constantly groaning with fruit, and at the ends of the side paths were a few berry plants as well.

When they returned to Myst, they headed for the cabin. It was pleasantly warm inside the cabin, as the furnace was on, but the real surprise was the fact that Atrus had thoughtfully laid out four rather comfortable looking sleeping bags for them. In the middle of the circle he had made for them was a lamp similar to that on his desk, and another note next to it.

_This is a fire-marble lamp,_ the note claimed, _To light it, shake the marble gently or tap it a few times gently. To put it out, squeeze the marble gently. Be careful when handling fire-marbles, and DO NOT, for any reason, throw a fire-marble._

They slept very well that night.

* * *

Jordan came over and sat down next to Rachel, putting his arm around her. She smiled at him.

"All right there, Rach?"

"Never been better."

They stood up together. Jordan picked up the basket of fruit that he'd picked. Together they went over to the book pedestal on the right, touched the image on the page and stepped forward into the now familiar spinning blackness.

Myst wasn't much, but it was home. Or close enough for now.

Close enough to a home.


End file.
